Struggling for Justice: China’s Courts and the Challenge of Reform

Struggling for Justice: China’s Courts and the Challenge of Reform

China's new leaders are striving to consolidate their country's return to prominence on the world stage. They confront Promethean challenges: restructuring a dynamic economy; responding to the demands of an increasingly prosperous and sophisticated society; controlling horrendous environmental pollution; liberating the cultural, civic, academic and intellectual potential of their talented people; reducing the endemic corruption that is undermining their success; adapting the Communist political system to promote these prodigious changes while balancing the needs of public order and human rights; and improving cooperation with other countries by enhancing foreign respect for China's accomplishments.

Courts, or some effective functional substitute, are essential for the attainment of all these goals. Yet China's judicial system is in the midst of a crucial struggle to determine its nature, role and power.

China's new leaders are making bold policy statements promoting the notion that, in their decision-making, Chinese courts should exercise greater independence from local authorities and other distorting influences. They have announced a series of new measures and experiments designed to increase the legitimacy of the judicial process and garner greater public support for it. These reforms face serious challenges, but the current attempt to chart a new course deserves our attention, study and encouragement.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to WPR’s fully searchable library of 16,000+ articles
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday
  • Weekly in-depth reports on important issues and countries
  • Daily links to must-read news and analysis from top sources around the globe, curated by our keen-eyed team of editors
  • The Weekly Wrap-Up email, with highlights of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review