ABSTRACT
The 'Two-Hands’ policy under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, and now under the third generation of leadership of the Communist Party of China, contrasts sharply with the practice under the leadership of Mao Zedong who was reported to have declared that ‘[we must] depend on rule of man, not rule of law’. This chapter argues that the changing fate of law in China is inexorably tied to the need, as perceived by the Party leadership, for national development. If legal theories developed by Chinese scholars are to be translated into practice, there is hope that China may abandon the ideology of legal instrumentalism and begin to see law as more than a means to an end. To support this argument, the chapter examines the troubled fate of law under Mao’s leadership. It focuses on analysing the changing perceptions of the role of law in present China and the broad trends in the rapid legal development in the 1980s and 1990s.
