Suchergebnisse

In 2018, China's general secretary, Xi Jinping, announced a three-year war on "black societies and evil forces" and promised to take down various forms of organized crime and evil forces within society. This article examines the operational features of this particular crackdown and how they diverged from previous "strike hard" campaigns. This campaign adopted novel strategies including embedding instructions on law enforcement within criminal justice institutions, promulgating special rules on the crimes of evil forces in order to "strike" campaign targets early, and deploying intrusive investigation tactics that focused on the person and not the crime. Using democratic centralism as a liberal lens, this campaign showcases the struggle between the imperative of legality and the politics of a major campaign in China. (China Q/GIGA)

AbstractIn 2018, China's general secretary, Xi Jinping, announced a three-year war on "black societies and evil forces" and promised to take down various forms of organized crime and evil forces within society. This article examines the operational features of this particular crackdown and how they diverged from previous "strike hard" campaigns. This campaign adopted novel strategies including embedding instructions on law enforcement within criminal justice institutions, promulgating special rules on the crimes of evil forces in order to "strike" campaign targets early, and deploying intrusive investigation tactics that focused on the person and not the crime. Using democratic centralism as a liberal lens, this campaign showcases the struggle between the imperative of legality and the politics of a major campaign in China.

This article analyzes the grassroots governance in the rapid urbanization process on the rural-urban periphery of Changsha with regard to the relationship between land-lost farmers and the local government. Distinct from conventional wisdom that implies an interpretation of that relationship that is too dichotomous and static, the present study explores the relationship using the structure-agency dynamics model played out locally within a network of power-interests structure. In turn, the different strategies attached to both sides of the grassroots governance induce a contrasting power-interests structure, as displayed in three resettlement communities: fatalism and resignation, outright conflict, and resolution through local participation. It is notable that local governance emerges when farmers' views and participation are incorporated, thus opening a public space for dialogue and farmers' entrepreneurial activity. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Taxonomy, as a methodological tool introduced from natural science, brought the categorization of legal systems to comparative law.1The term 'legal family'2is normally used as a metaphor, because it recognizes that within each grouping there are many variations. Each of the legal families is regarded as a combination of fundamental features of legal systems which have certain similarities. As an analytical device, taxonomy renders the comparison of different laws and legal institutions manageable by means of simplifying or abstracting the diverse and complicated realities of a myriad of legal systems. As a result, the concept of legal families acts as a support for legal borrowing and transplantation, as well as comprising an inevitable part of most comparative law works. Even where as few as two jurisdictions are involved, the categorization of legal families is still a useful tool for most comparative legal analysis. Assisted by the notion of legal families, comparativists can readily understand and explore an unfamiliar legal system.3Normally, such scholars tend to accept the conventional or widely accepted categorization of a particular legal system as belonging to a certain legal family. However, without detailed scrutiny of the first-hand material, distortions may arise as a result of preconceptions held at the beginning of the comparative study.4

Based on an empirical fieldwork study in a central-south municipal city in China, this article discusses the contestation between land-lost farmers and local government in the process of urbanization and land expropriation, focusing on the land-lost farmers' responses to this process. After a discussion of land-lost farmers' reasons for discontent and their actions, it is argued that such a contestation is an interaction where land-lost farmers tend to lay claim to their legitimate morality while local government lays claim to its legitimate authority, through the institutional approach of an appeal system provided by the state. The truth is that not only do both sides of the contestation have to rely on the power conferred by the central state, but also they constitute an interdependent local network. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

Introduction : the phenomenology of institutional innovation -- Developing new modes of institutional description -- Governing by metaphor : the intertextuality of institutional life in China -- Relationality in rural property regimes -- Relational institutions and ENGOs in China : from Nu River to Changzhou -- Multiple legal traditions, legal pluralism and institutional innovation : the Chinese criminal procedure system in contrast -- Conclusion : China, the looking-glass.