China, after some twenty years of reform, is no longer a country without law. Indeed, one may legitimately complain that there are too many laws that are changing too rapidly. However, law acquires no life nor performs its intended social functions without proper implementation and enforcement. Here, few people, Chinese or foreign, are content with the general situation of implementation of law in China. The problems and difficulties in implementing and enforcing laws and regulations are reported and discussed in the various forums of the Chinese media almost on a daily basis, and often reported in Western media also. Academics in China are filling the pages of various legal journals with their diagnoses and analyses of the causes of, and solutions to, the lack of proper implementation of law, and legal regulations and policy measures are being issued to deal with these problems and to overcome the difficulties. The future of the rule of law in China, as we are so often reminded by scholars of Chinese politics and law, largely depends on the proper implementation and enforcement of law.
This is a book about `law-in-action' in China, that is, it focuses on the administration of the law as a process through which `law-in-the-books' is put into action and, hence, is made to perform its intended social functions. It deals with the process, the institutional settings (the players), and the political, economic, social, and cultural settings (the factors) involved in the administration of law in China. Throughout the book, we will see a variety of problems and difficulties involved in implementing and enforcing laws and regulations that are identified and analyzed by the contributors. We will also see analyses on legal regulations and policy measures that have been issued to rectify the many identified problems, to raise the standard of actual implementation of law, and to improve the functioning of the various law-implementing/enforcing authorities. Additionally, the book provides various case studies on implementation of law in China.
The present book, we believe, is among the first collective efforts at a systematic and comprehensive study of the implementation of law in China, and we hope that it will stimulate many more such studies - studies on the actual operation and impact of law on society and on individuals.