ABSTRACT
China’s legal system has changed more in the last 100 years than at any time in the country’s long history. These changes are partly the result of both China’s interactions with the outside world, particularly in the context of the globalized economy, and internal aspirations to create a unified state and stable society and increase standards of living. The significant policy decision in 1978 to develop a ‘socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics’ (Sachs and Woo 1994) required the rapid creation of new regulatory policies. The decision to respond to and join the international legal framework underpinning the global trading system also required China to demonstrate that it organized its institutions and practices in compliance with international commercial standards. One method of demonstrating such compliance was by using the legal system to establish authoritative recognition and regulation of those standards and obligations. Legal and legislative reform became a major tool of governance and policy implementation in a way that had little precedent in imperial or revolutionary China.
