Introduction: China's deepening socialist rule of law

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a critical appraisal of China's deepening socialist rule of law and, looking ahead, what the implications of the domestic reforms are for the international legal domain. It establishes the three broad organizing principles of the many factors influencing China's legal system developments. The book addresses the three central sets of issues regarding China's law reform agenda, the first relating to ideology and competing conceptions of legal development. It focuses on the relationship between economic and legal reform and implementation challenges for both theory and practice. The book explores how China's domestic law reforms may influence global legal systems and how international legal infrastructure may interact with China's domestic and foreign policy settings. It argues that procedural justice is a notion that was reintroduced to Chinese law in the post-Mao reforms.