China's Socialist Rule of Law Reforms Under Xi Jinping

Under the direction of the Communist Party of China (CPC), key legal challenges have been identified which will shape the modernization of China’s legal and administrative institutions. An increasingly complex set of legal actors now seek to influence this development, including securities regulators, bankers, accountants, lawyers, local-level mediators and some of China’s newly rich. Whilst the rising middle class wants to voice its interests and concerns, the CPC strives to maintain its leading role.

This book provides a critical appraisal of China’s deepening socialist rule of law and looks ahead to the implications of the domestic reforms for the international legal domain. With contributions from leading Chinese law specialists, it draws on specific illustrations from judicial reform, constitutional law, procedural law, anti-corruption, property law and urban development, socio-economic dispute resolution and Chinese macro-economics. The book questions how China’s domestic law reforms will impact international legal systems, and how international law can be used in managing key regional and bilateral relationships and in dispute resolution, such as in the South China Sea and international trade.

Assessing the state and direction of domestic law reform and including debates around the legal implications of some of China’s most pressing foreign policy challenges today, this volume will be of huge interest to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in Asia law, Chinese law, international law, comparative law and law reform.

John Garrick is an attorney of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia. He is author and co-editor publications includingLaw, Wealth and Power in China: Commercial Law Reforms in Context (Routledge 2014) andLaw and Policy for China’s Market Socialism (Routledge 2015).

Yan Chang Bennett is a lawyer and Manager for the Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University. From 2009-2015 she was the Assistant Director for the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program. Before coming to Princeton, she was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State having served as Vice Consul in China.