Law and Legality in China: The Testament of a China-watcher (review)

164 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 Laszlo Ladany, S. J. Edited by Marie-Luise Näth. Law and Legality in China: The Testament ofa China-watcher Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1992. xii, 179 pp. $36.00. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press This is a curious, quirky volume—rich in information and irritating in its inconsistencies —resembling nothing so much as the idiosyncratic weekly newsletter China News Analysis, which its author founded and published in Hong Kong for almost thirty years. Unfortunately, Fr. Ladany, the Hungarian-born Jesuit who forsook careers as a violinist and a lawyer for a religious vocation and (after being forced to leave mainland China in 1949) a career as a China-watcher, died leaving uncompleted the manuscripts from which this book was formed. Two younger China scholars, Dr. Jürgen Domes and Dr. Marie-Luise Näth, edited the manuscripts, which a Publisher's Note tells the reader were originally intended to be published as two separate volumes—one on China's governance and the other on the role oflaw in the People's Republic of China (PRC). From these manuscripts , the editors produced a work which combines flashes of genuine insight and much useful information about law in the PRC with half-truths, gross errors , and relentlessly right-wing rhetoric. Regular readers of Fr. Ladany's newsletter will be on somewhat familiar ground here and may be able to discern what was his contribution; others must decide for themselves whether the sporadic rewards are worth the labor ofwading through the chaff. To begin on a positive note, the valuable aspects of this posthumous work must be recognized. In four chapters of slightly more than one hundred pages (chapters 3-6), the legal history ofthe PRC is outlined and discussed by a Sinologist who not only was a keen observer of contemporary China but also had a firm grasp of Chinese history and traditional culture. Thus, along with the basic periodization and recounting oflegal developments, some perspective for evaluating the impact of law on modern Chinese society is also provided. Importantly , Fr. Ladany's early legal education comes through as his text takes pains to separate what Roscoe Pound called the "law in action" from the "law in the books." The actual implementation oflaws after their promulgation (or, more often , their nonobservance by Chinese leaders) is probed; nothing is taken at face value. Unlike some more recent observers of Chinese legalization without his extensive background, Fr. Ladany follows through with his analysis. His skeptical eye, when turned to (as the Chinese locution has it) "so-called" (suoweide) law- Reviews 165 yers, courts, and judges, reveals their fundamental nature and the incongruence ofthose terms—as used in the PRC—with their Western counterparts. A European trained in the civil law, he knows how far the Chinese reality diverges from the formal model on which it was based. All this is good; to have it so succinctly stated in one handyvolume is even better. On the other hand, this book has a number of faults. Ironically, the first two chapters combine some of the worst elements of stereotypical, "sound-bite" Pekinology and misinformation with some quite profound reflections on a lifetime of China-watching. His brief account ofWestern attraction to, and repulsion from, China is wide-ranging and wise; yet his synopsis of Chinese history and geography in the same chapter suffers from both myopia and cliché. An excursion on "Chineseness" would have been better edited out of this book—it describes only a narrow range ofthe Chinese elite in the ideal conception of premodern China. The self-restrained Confucian gentleman (junzi) was hardly the norm for China's population over the millennia. The idea that all the virtues of Chinese tradition were eliminated by the Communists' accession to national political power (minimizing the impact ofa previous century ofWestern imperialism , Japanese occupation, and spotty Westernization) is risible. Similarly, a chapter on "China's Ancient Legal System and Its End" provides only a few tantalizing glimpses of the author's brilliance (such as his concise pairing of two late Qing legal reformers,Wu Tingfang and Shen Jiaben) buried in a shoddy analysis of China...