ABSTRACT

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) path to formal legality is traceable to its economic renaissance that began in 1979, as laid out in the preceding chapter. Understanding that a predictable legal system is critical for a transformation from a socialist to a market economy, China in short order re-instituted its courts, re-opened its law schools, and enacted laws and regulations. According to the Eighth National Lawyers Congress, there are more than 200,000 licensed lawyers working in 17,000 law firms in 2011, in a country of 1.3 billion people. This is a far cry from the Cultural Revolution, when the legal system was dismantled and there were no private lawyers (Xinhua 2011d).