ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine two aspects of the Chinese party–state structure: the legal system (law enforcement) and the legislative system (law making), both of which are modeled on the former Soviet Union, and continue to retain the core institutional features in the interlocking power relationship of the Leninist party–state. In theory, the legislature has the power to make laws independently while the courts have the authority to administer the law independently. However, in practice, both institutions are created by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in accordance with its political ideology, political principles, political needs, and changing policies. Both must follow the leadership, directions, and policies of the CPC. Therefore, the two systems—legislature and courts at all levels of government—operate in subordination to, not independently of, the party leadership in the confining party–state institutional context.1 Laws, legislations, and legal regulations have been seen as the ruling instruments of the “Socialist Proletariat Dictatorship” and of the leadership of the CPC, and now are also viewed as the necessary instruments for governing and regulating the increasingly complicated and pluralistic social organizations, social relationships and business interactions of a society in transition and to accommodate the ruling party’s reform policies and goals of economic and social development. To understand recent changes in Chinese legal and legislative systems, we must first study the points of departure from which they have evolved in the past three decades, and to what extent the reform and change have impacted the nature and operation of the legislature and the court.
