China’s socialist market economy is a market economy co-existing with a large public sector of the economy, affected by the State as a policymaker, a regulator and an important actor along with private ones; general interests in principle prevail over individual ones. A major role of the law is of providing the tools for administrative leadership and efficient macro-control. Legal and policy documents concur in indicating a model for the developing Chinese legal system: not as Western-style “rule of law” (r.o.l.); more and better socialist laws; effective supervision at all levels; intense macro-control over private economy; more efficient, law-abiding administration and legal institutions. The governing authorities are at different levels, according to the size/impact of each specific business, and each of them has or may have a say beyond the law, so implementing full macro- and micro-control on the market at various levels, through a substantial number of “policy checks” at appropriate junctions or in blank areas of the law. Differentiated “modes” of the law could be the results of a coordinated absorption within the socialist frame of values, mechanisms, norms, formants hailing from different sources.
Credit card fraud is a new type of fraud amended into the Criminal Law of China in 1997. The “credit card” under credit card fraud is interpreted as a very board concept, which includes debit card and virtually all electronic payment cards used in ordinary payment, credit loan, transfer and settlement of account, cash deposit and withdrawal. Therefore, it is necessary for the legislature to revise “credit card” under this special fraud into “electronic payment card,” and “credit card fraud” into “electronic payment card fraud,” which will be understood easily and precisely. “Use” and “fraudulent use” of credit card under this fraud is defined as ordinary use of credit card, including withdrawal cash with authentic or forged credit card from ATMs. It is unreasonable to define “malicious overdraft” as a form of credit card fraud under the Chinese Criminal Law. In the future amendment, this kind of criminal conduct shall be separated as independent named as “malicious overdraft” or “abuse of credit card” under the Criminal Law with less stiff statutory punishment than that of credit card fraud. Besides, under the Chinese Criminal Law, stealing credit card and using it is held as “theft,” which is neither reasonable nor logical. Therefore, it should be revised in the future criminal law.
Started as an undefined US military project to the current global network, the Internet has been developing and improved at an amazing speed, which also brought out enormous challenges to the traditional way of life worldwide. By analyzing the features of the Internet, this paper reveals the impacts of the Internet on jurisdictional principles applied in traditional international civil and commercial cases and aims to apply traditional rules under the new environment of the Internet. In addition, by referring to the international uniform legislation and from the US judicial theories and practices, this paper also brings out reflections and suggestions regarding this issue.
Arbitration is universally used in the settlement of international commercial disputes largely due to its inherent confidentiality. However, the expedient element of the confidentiality is encountering challenges mostly owing to public interest or other reasons. This article not only discusses the grounds of confidentiality in arbitration, but also the effective way of its helping those people who wish to respect the confidentiality in international commercial arbitration.
Support and supervision of a court ensure the integrity of the arbitral process and protect the public interest. However, to prevent the confidence of the arbitral system from being damaged, the judicial control should not be too strict. The support and supervision of a court can be seen in many aspects, among which is to challenge an award. Under the Chinese arbitration law, an award made by a foreign arbitration agency is regarded as a foreign award, challenge of which involves resisting recognition and enforcement in accordance with the relevant provisions of the international treaties concluded or acceded to by the People’s Republic of China or on the principle of reciprocity.1 Accordingly, an award made by a Chinese arbitration agency is regarded as a domestic award, challenge of which includes setting aside and resisting enforcement. As to the grounds and procedures for challenging a domestic award, including foreign-related awards and non-foreign-related awards, some Chinese provisions are either obscure or contradictory. There may be room for the Chinese system to be modernized. The Model Law and the English Arbitration Act of 1996 may be used for its reference.
The Chinese Arbitration Law of 1995, together with the Civil Procedure Law and other sources of arbitration laws, is served as the legal bases for the Chinese arbitration system. Compared with advanced arbitration systems in the world, there still exist some defects of the Chinese Arbitration Law due to its lack of rich legislative experience and the conservative attitude toward arbitration. However, the Judicial Interpretation by the Supreme Court of China in 1995 makes a progress in Chinese Arbitration Law by strengthening the support to arbitration, but not playing the interventionist role of it.
This article gives a detailed review of the evolution of the Chinese study of Foreign Legal History over the past 60 years. It covers five aspects: academic conferences, Chinese translated works on Foreign Legal History, the education of Chinese scholars in this field, academic activities and contestations, and the prospect of Foreign Legal History as a discipline. This article aims to tease out the achievements and problems of the studies of Foreign Legal History and analyze the social conditions underlying these problems and achievements. It concludes that the reconstruction of Chinese legal system and the development of Chinese legal system cannot stand in isolation from the process of absorbing, transplanting, and learning from foreign jurisprudence and legal systems. Though Foreign Legal History might not become a hot topic, it remains of great significance to the Chinese understanding of law.
The development of the Chinese legal system is based on the learning of foreign legal systems. Foreign legal history, as one of the elementary courses in higher legal education, is becoming a driving force for China’s progress toward the rule of law and is playing an indispensible role in the construction of Chinese legal system by educating, cultivating and academic exchanging. The discipline of Foreign Legal History not only provides diverse perspectives for the construction of a new Chinese legal system, but also testifies the establishment of the rule of law in China. It not only benefits Chinese legal system, but also makes contribution to the cultivation of the new generation of Chinese legal talents. Therefore, we should insist on learning from the legal cultural heritage embedded in Foreign Legal History for the purpose of developing Chinese legal system.
From the origin, there has been a strong connection between international relations and international law. In the development of the history of different academic subjects, the research on international relations and international law are interdependently promoting each other. As a result, the realization of interdisciplinary research on international legal theory and the study of international law is inevitable. As a matter of fact, even though the interdisciplinary research of the two subjects has been separated for almost half a century, the need for the development of the subject and the changing world political and economical status give them a new chance for reunification. Recently, the interdisciplinary research on international relations theory and international law by the Western academic is becoming the order of the day, which has become the latest shining point of the recent development of the two subjects, which is even regarded as the new revolution of international relations theory and the study of international law. In this context, the past ten years is a period of emergence of Chinese international relations and the interdisciplinary research of international law. In the past ten years, some scholars have overcome “the difficulty of interdisciplinary research,” “the prejudice within the subject” and “the gap among different subjects,” and made pioneering research in the field of “systematic connection” and “issues in overlapping field.” Moreover, they gradually make the interdisciplinary research to be a popular method and a common recognition. Based on the current studies, interdisciplinary research will have a broad future in the fields such as “the interchange of concepts,” “the exchange of method,” and “the mutual assistance of materials,” which will provide scholars in this area with a broad space for research.