Law As an Instrument : Sources of Chinese Law for Authoritarian Legality

How can the law be employed pragmatically to facilitate development and underpin illiberal principles? The case of contemporary China shows that the law plays an increasingly important role in the country's illiberal approach to both domestic and China-related global affairs, which has posed intellectual challenges in understanding it with reference to conventional, Western legal concepts and theories. This book provides a systematic exploration of the sources of Chinese law as pragmatically reconfigured in context, aiming to fill the gap between written and practised law. In combination with fieldwork investigations, it conceptualises various formal and informal laws, including the Constitution, congressional statutes, supreme court interpretations, judicial documents, guiding cases and judicial precedents. Moreover, it engages a theoretical analysis of legal instrumentalism, illuminating how and why the law works as an instrument for authoritarian legality in China, with international reflections on other comparable regimes. Copyright_page Dedication Epigraph Contents Figures Tables Preface and Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction: Emergence of Chinese Law? 2 A Dual Constitution with Illiberal Characteristics 3 Judicial Interpretation as a de facto Primary Statute for Adjudication 4 The Judicial Document as Informal State Law 5 Guiding Cases as a Form of Statutory Interpretation 6 Bureaucratization of Judicial Precedents 7 Concluding Reflections Appendix: Methodology and Data Bibliography Index As China's power on the world stage has grown, it has increasingly and pragmatically employed law as an important instrument in an illiberal domestic and global approach. This timely analysis of Chinese law explains how law operates as an instrument in a conservative context very different from Western liberal traditions. Macroeconomics for Emerging East Asia presents a regionally tailored approach to the study of macroeconomic theory and policy. Concepts are illustrated using the latest empirical data and extensive case study analysis for 13 economies of Northeast and Southeast Asia. Wang shows how the law in China is conceptually reconfigured and instrumentally employed to shore up an illiberal authoritarian regime