The Liberal Rule-of-law as a Critical Yardstick for China? Explaining Some Contradictions

Abstract

This paper continues the debate over whether the prevailing liberal model of the rule-of-law, as classically formulated within the distinctly Western constitutional tradition and then superimposed historically within parts of Asia as a result of colonialism, provides a contextually appropriate standard for critically assessing developments over governance within China. It argues that there are serious difficulties in identifying a viable understanding of the meaning, scope and rationale for ‘the’ rule-of-law. This represents both a general difficulty, and one that applies with particular force to all those legal and political systems that have not arisen from the historically specific context of Western Europe, and the latter’s offshoots – such as the usa. This paper suggests that we consider changing the ideologically-loaded question of ‘what does the rule-of-law doctrine mean for how China should be governed?’ with an equally polemical question: namely, ‘how can our understandings of the liberal rule-of-law be questioned and, perhaps, ultimately redefined, or even abandoned, in the light of the practicalities of securing effective governance within China and those other states that are largely outside the geopolitical and military ambit of Western liberalism and neo-liberalism?’.