power by ensuring the smooth progress of socialist revolution and development and by setting about establishing a socialist legal system quickly, opening up a new era of China’s rule of law. In the early years of the New China, the Party paid much attention to the legal construction and worked hard to build a lawbased country. Laws and regulations were formulated soon to solve the problem that no law could be resorted to.
In 1954, the first Constitution of New China was promulgated and implemented immediately as the fundamental law of China, which confirmed the achievements of the people’s revolution. The Constitution stipulated the basic system and tasks of the country and provided a fundamental legal basis and constitutional protection for the consolidation of the people’s democratic government and the building of New China.
In 1956, the work report at the Party’s Eighth National People’s Congress pointed out: “As the period of revolutionary storms has passed and new relations of production have been put in place, the task of our fight has shifted to ensuring the development of social productivity. Thus, the methods of the socialist revolution have to make a change. A complete legal system is absolutely necessary”. “One of our urgent tasks in our country’s work is to systematically formulate relatively complete laws and improve our country’s legal system”. To this end, we must “have laws to observe and abide by laws”, and “more importantly strengthen the Party’s leadership over the legal system. The Party committees at all levels must put the issue of legal system on the agenda, and conduct regular discussions and reviews about it”.1
After 1958, however, due to the mistakes in the guiding thought of the Party and the country, Mao Zedong’s view of the legal system made a major change. He did not believe that civil and criminal laws could be used to maintain order and that the country should be governed by the people, but just by the law, and the law could only serve as a reference for work.2
The Party’s second-generation central collective leadership with Deng Xiaoping as the core profoundly reviewed China’s historical experiences and lessons, and made the strategic decision to shift the focus of the Party and the state’s work from the class conflict as the guideline to economic development at the center and reform and opening-up. The major shift led to the restoration, reconstruction, and development of the rule of law and created a new era of China’s rule of law. The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee made it clear: “Rule of law must be strengthened and democracy must be institutionalized and codified in order to guarantee people’s democracy, and ensure such a system and laws are consistent, continuous and authoritative. All this will ensure that there are laws to go by, that they are observed and strictly enforced, and that violators are brought to book”. Thereafter, China established the basic principles for the development of socialist democracy and the improvement of the socialist legal system in modernization. In 1979, the CPC Central Committee issued the Directive on Resolutely Ensuring the Effective Implementation of the Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, which emphasized whether the seven laws, including the Criminal Procedure Law, can be strictly enforced was an important indicator of whether China was implementing the socialist rule of law. It is the first time that the concept of “rule of law” was officially used in important state documents. The 1982 Constitution held high the banner of socialist democracy and the rule of law. It further emphasized in the preamble that the people of all ethnic groups across the country, all state organs and armed forces, political parties and social organizations, and enterprises and institutions must take the Constitution as the fundamental principle of their activities and shoulder the responsibility for maintaining the dignity of the Constitution and guaranteeing its implementation. As Deng Xiaoping pointed out: “we will continue to develop socialist democracy and improve the socialist legal system. This has been the unyielding basic principle of the Central Committee since the Third Plenary Session. We will never allow any wavering of it in the future”.
2.The Establishment of the Basic Policy of Law-Based Governance of the Country Completely Eliminates the Institutional Impediment to the Healthy Development of Chinese Society
After the Fourth Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee, the Party’s third-generation central collective leadership with Jiang Zemin as the core, on the basis of further advancing and deepening the great cause of reform and opening-up, clearly put forward the goal of reform: establishing a socialist market economy system. Aiming at this, China also proposed to set up the legal system under socialist market economy and adhered to and implemented the basic policy of the law-based governance of the country, creating a new phase of China’s development in the rule of law.
With the Resolution on the establishment of a socialist market economy system at the 14th CPC National People’s Congress in 1992, China greatly accelerated its pace in the reform of the economic system and achieved remarkable results on many measures for establishing a socialist market economy system. However, due to the relative hysteresis of legislation, many laws in China served the planned economy at that time. If China emphasized indiscriminately that “there were laws to abide by, the laws must be observed, the laws must be strictly enforced, and those in violation of law must be held liable”, the more stringent implementation of laws serving the planned economy, the greater resistance these laws would produce to the establishment of a socialist market economy system. Therefore, the proposition that “market economy is the economy under rule of law” came into being. With the gradual establishment of China’s socialist market economy system, the continuous development of socialist democracy and the rule of law, and the continuous construction of the socialist spiritual civilization, Jiang Zemin further emphasized the importance of strengthening the legal construction in his speech at the legal system seminar of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee in February 1996. He pointed out that strengthening the construction of China’s socialist legal system and the law-based governance of the country was an important part of Comrade Deng Xiaoping’s theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and an important guideline for the Party and the government in managing the state and social affairs.3 Then the concept of the basic policy of the law-based governance of the country was officially put forward.
In March 1996, the Ninth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and 2010 Program of Perspective Goals, a legally valid national document, formulated by the Fourth Session of the Eighth Standing Committee of the NPC, confirmed the law-based governance of the country and building the country under a socialist legal system and clearly stated that the major task of the basic policy of the law-based governance of the country was strengthening legislation, judiciary, law enforcement, and law publicity; upholding the close integration of reform, development, and the construction of legal system; further formulating and implementing laws and regulations which were adapted to economic and social development; strengthening and improving judiciary, administrative law enforcement, and the oversight over law enforcement; resolutely rectifying the mistakes that the available laws were not observed, the enforcement of laws was not strict, violations of laws were not investigated, and the power was abused.
In September 1997, the work report by the 15th National Congress of the CPC established for the first time the law-based governance of the country as the basic policy for the Party to lead the people in governing the country, changed “building the country under a socialist legal system” to “building a socialist country under the rule of law”, and made a specific definition of the scientific connotation of the basic policy of the law-based governance of the country: “the rule of law means that under the leadership of the Party, the people manage state affairs, economic and cultural undertakings and the society through various channels and forms in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and other laws and ensure that all national tasks are carried out in accordance with the law and gradually make socialist democracy institutionalized through standards and procedures, so that these system and laws do not change with the change in leadership and the change of leaders’ opinions and attention”.
In March 1999, the Second Session of the Ninth National People’s Congress adopted the Amendment to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China,
