ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by surveying the rejection of the very idea of law as a Marxist-Maoist doctrine, and the extremely precarious position of laws, legal institutions, and individuals working in the legal system in the Mao era, which oscillated between accepting law and legal institutions, and destroying them, and which culminated in the destructions of the "Great Cultural Revolution". It then develops an argument addressing primarily the post-Mao era and the current post-post-Mao era under Xi Jinping. First, since the introduction of Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening policies, a liberal conception of rule of law has "caught on" in China along with the wider realization of its potential to protect legal rights, including human rights. Second, more recent changes in the Chinese Party-State, especially under Xi Jinping's leadership, represent a turn toward a legally positivistic, morally relativistic, and anti-liberal conception of law, asserting the very nature of law to be its subordination to political power.
