Power versus Law in Modern China

Qiang Fang is associate professor of East Asian history at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He is coeditor of Modern Chinese Legal Reform: New Perspectives and author of Chinese Complaint Systems: Natural Resistance.Xiaobing Li is professor of history and director of the Western Pacific Institute at the University of Central Oklahoma. He is the author or coeditor of several books, including Modern Chinese Legal Reform: New Perspectives and A History of the Modern Chinese Army.

An important contribution to the literature on the law in the People's Republic of China (PRC), a polity which aspires to become a law-based state. The authors posit a conflict between the absolute power of the Chinese Communist Party and the constitutional guarantee of equal justice for all Chinese citizens irrespective of their station in life. They show that the power of the party consistently trumps justice."" - Steven I. Levine, coauthor of Arc of Empire: America's Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam""This work is a unique interdisciplinary scholarship in nature and can conveniently serve assuch for the research in contemporary China in the fields of history, Chinese study, legal study, economics, political science, as well as sociology. While Western scholarship on China's economic reforms focus more on government policy-making, developmental process, or/and consequential achievements, very few pay close attention to the inner circle commotion and uproar often demanding legal reforms and political restructure inside China."" - Pingchao Zhu, author of The Americans and Chinese at the Korean War Cease-fire Negotiations, 1950 - 1953