Joint Workshop of the Confucius Institute at Freie Universität Berlin and the Chair for Chinese Law at Universität Osnabrück

Social Development and Legal Relations in Contemporary China

Having just undergone political structural reforms, it might be time to step back and regard a wider picture. China restarted its development after the trauma of the Cultural Revolution. When doing so, it reintroduced state institutions, dividing state and party organization, with the clear aim of creating laws, applying laws, and abiding by laws. This resulted in a normative and institutional built up on an unprecedented scale. As one consequence of this development, it lead to the constitutional aim of creating a system of ‘governing by law’ or 'rule of law' (依法治国). Therefore, law might be perceived as a universal set of norms that is equally important for citizens and for state (and party) actors alike. However, when looking at legal relations in everyday live, we see systemic differences in treating ordinary citizens, state institutions, and party organizations. Therefore, our workshop aims at discussing the role of law as it is perceived in modern Chinese society. In doing so, we do not emphasize the rather theoretical perspective of scrutinizing the concept of 依法治国 (rule of law), but try to show in more concrete terms, how social relations are dominated and/or challenged by the law.

Programm