Resource: Legal System Expansion
Media Type:
QuickTime Video
Length: 2m 06s
Size: 3.2 MB
The development of China’s market economy has created changes in many areas of its society. For example, the republic is creating a new legal system to manage the increasing number of cases that have been brought to litigation in recent years. Nearly four hundred law schools have been established and hundreds of thousands of judges and lawyers have been trained in the past twenty five years. In this video from Wide Angle, law students participate in a practice court at Sichuann University in the city of Chengdu.
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Loading reviews...Teachers' Domain, Legal System Expansion, published August 22, 2008, retrieved on ,
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/wa08.socst.world.glob.systemexp/
- Background Essay
- Questions for Discussion
- Standards
Print Background EssayChina's move to market capitalism is forcing deep changes in society. In the past twenty years, the number of cases going through the court system has more than doubled and hundreds of thousands of judges and lawyers have been trained.
When China's Civil war ended in 1949, Mao Zedong and the Communist Party established the People's Republic of China. They wanted to centralize power, unify the country and develop China's industry and infrastructure. A few of Mao Zedong's nationwide projects were the Great Leap Forward, a 5-year economic and social plan that he initiated in 1958, and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Unfortunately, at the end of the Maoist era, the economy and the education system of China were very weak.
Deng Xiaoping, who became China's leader in 1976, introduced new policies to encourage economic growth. Large segments of the economy were cut loose from direct state control. The private sector boomed, a new class of entrepreneurs prospered and China's formal legal system was re-established. At the same time, however, the Communist Party remained in control of a one-party, authoritarian state and a growing gap between rich and poor emerged. Employers used their newfound market power to exploit workers. Tensions developed. Conflicting claims of property rights came to be a significant problem.
The government of China decided to address these issues by trying to expand and modernize the legal system. Since the 1980s the country has opened almost 400 law schools, training hundreds of thousands of lawyers and judges. The country has also created education campaigns to encourage people to settle their issues in court rather than on the streets.
Before 1995, many judges did not have college degrees or much knowledge about the law. Since 1995, the requirements to become a judge have gotten stricter: now judges need to have a university degree and must pass a national exam. However, the judges are appointed and paid by the one-party government. Their decisions, as well as decisions and actions of lawyers, are often influenced by the Communist Party and local governments. Many Chinese citizens are bothered by the corruption they see as widespread in China.
In 2003, Hu Jintao was elected as the President of the People's Republic of China. His challenges include trying to find solutions to China's economic, social and environmental problems. One of his initiatives, the Socialist Core Value System, encourages honesty and law-abiding and ethical behavior among all Chinese citizens. Whether President Hu's goals lead to real improvements will be a key measure of China's progress toward implementing the rule of law.
We assign reference terms to each statement within a standards document and to each media resource, and correlations are based upon matches of these terms for a given grade band. If a particular standards document of interest to you is not displayed yet, it most likely has not yet been processed by ASN or by Teachers' Domain. We will be adding social studies and arts correlations over the coming year, and also will be increasing the specificity of alignment.Source: Wide Angle: "The People's Court"
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