This book illustrates - through the analysis of more than two hundred criminal cases selected from Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and the Legal System) in the period 1979-89 - that the establishment of a formal criminal justice system and the development of an embryonic socialist theory of law in China reflect a genuine and widespread legal awakening.
Part 1 Marxism in Deng's China: the impact of ideological upheaval on the legal system in China; Deng Xiaoping's ideas on law. Part 2 Legal reform and the practice of law - case studies in the administration of criminal justice, 1979-89: in the wake of the Third Plenum - the inception of legal reform; legal reform in progress - the emergence of a legal society, 1986-89. Part 3 Towards a Chinese socialist system and a Chinese theory of law: the 1989 student democratic movement - a legal perspective; trials of dissidents of the 1989 democratic movement - the limits of socialist justice.