The Politics of Law and Stability in China ed. by Susan Trevaskes et al. (review)

Since Chinese leaders launched the reform movement in 1978, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has experienced a tremendous wave of change. The shifting nature of the ongoing reform, however, is plagued by contradiction and the clash of law and power. The contemporary Chinese legal system in which the judiciary is partly under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has been labeled as the rule by law. In the PRC, the CCP uses the law to rule, but its discretionary power is not subject to the law. Susan Trevaskes, Elisa Nesossi, Flora Sapio, and Sara Biddulph explain in their edited book that because the CCP has always been the ruling party in the PRC, the judiciary has been the knife hilt of the Party. By claiming to make the law above everything and in the meantime requiring the judiciary to be its enforcer, the CCP is surely facing a self-made contradiction. This collection of thirteen essays offers a comprehensive assessment of the Chinese legal institution and an insightful interpretation of how the system made some improvements through the legal reforms in the 2000s–2010s.

The co-editors have brought together a group of prominent experts from China, Hong Kong, the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe for their effort to provide a better understanding of the progress and problems of legal reform in China. This book collects essays from the leading social science scholars, legal experts, policy analysts, and political strategists, and examines legal issues, including identifying civil rights concerns, analyzing court corruption, and exposing factors behind law enforcement and convictions. The authors address these important topics from a new perspective through a cooperative interdisciplinary methodology among Chinese-Western scholars interested in the subject. Any legal professionals, political science scholars, social scientists in China and Asian Studies, and scholars in Chinese criminal law and criminal justice will find the volume’s previously unknown cases to be of great interest and will appreciate the discussion of important questions not raised before.

The chapter authors and co-authors make a significant contribution through multifaceted components from different fields such as political science, criminal justice, law, sociology, economics, and history. They introduce and explore the theory and practice of policy patterns, the political establishment, social institutions, and the legal system by identifying key problems in Chinese government and society contained within the larger framework of the international sphere. They point out that “Uneven distribution of wealth, unequal access to justice, and corruption—entrenched throughout a political system characterized by weak oversight mechanisms—have inspired widespread discontent. Many increasingly feel that their health, property and wages are no longer adequately protected by the legal system or government” (p. 5).

The twelve essays are organized into three parts. The first part of the collection, “Managing Disputes,” includes three chapters, exploring the politics-law-stability nexus in relation to three types of disputes: labor, land, and environmental. In the first chapter, Sara Biddulph focuses on labor disputes which the party-state “sees as a serious threat to social and political stability” (p. 8). Her study shows that low wages and work insecurity remain the major concerns of Chinese workers. Xin He examines “hard-nail household” disputes to reveal the process of legal mediation in land-taking cases as a relatively new form of judicial activism aimed to prevent unrest and preserve stability. The chapter confirms that “Concern for social stability is widely seen to play an important role in the operation of the nation’s courts” (p. 43). In the third chapter, Zhang Wanhong and Ding Peng illustrate how judicial and governmental activism has become prominent in rural environmental disputes over water use. Their co-authored chapter concludes: “the only way forward to build and maintain a stable Chinese society is to protect and realize people’s rights with an effective...