ABSTRACT
Dispute resolution, like all other aspects of Chinese society, is being reshaped by extensive reforms that began in 1979. As China's influence in the international community grows, other nations must be concerned about the capacity of Chinese legal institutions to perform their declared functions. The chapter sketches the operation of mediation and Chinese law generally before reform and describes legal reform and the institutional context of dispute resolution in China today. It focuses on extrajudicial mediation and the courts and discusses reflections on the broader significance of the operation of the institutions. The politicization of mediation was an expression of a larger trend affecting all legal institutions, including rules themselves. Dispute resolution was almost always conducted through mediation, or through negotiation between administrative units. The mediation committees' power to deal with minor criminal cases under the 1954 regulations has been omitted from the more recent Regulations. Under Mao, legal institutions outside the criminal process were relegated to even greater insignificance.
