Middle Income Blues: The East Asian Model and Implications for Constitutional Development in China

Abstract

China has made remarkable progress in a short time in improving its constitutional and legal systems, having essentially begun from scratch in 1978 (see generally Peerenboom 2002; Chen 2004b). As rule of law and other good-governance indicators are highly correlated with wealth, China’s performance is a rguably best judged relative too ther countries in its income class (see Peerenboom 2004a, 148). China performs better than the average country in its lower-middle income class on rule of law. China also does reasonably well on most other core indicators of good governance relative to its income level as listed in the World Bank Good Governance Indicators for 2007.1 Few would have predicted twenty-five years ago that China’s legal system would have achieved such impressive results in implementing rule of law and achieving good governance in such a short time given the size of the country and its starting conditions.KeywordsGood GovernanceAdministrative AgencyConstitutional CourtPolitical LibertySupreme PeopleThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.