The Re-emergence of Family Law in Post-Mao China: Marriage, Divorce and Reproduction

Abstract

This article examines developments in the family law of post-Mao China. The expansion of the legal regime governing Chinese family life during the past 15 years has been extremely rapid and represents an important legal advance, although to some extent the developments are old wine in new bottles - a reconstruction in legislative form of pre-existing administrative norms already governing family life. In addition, the article necessarily considers a number of significant tensions or contradictions that have become apparent in PRC family law over the past decade or so.At one level the post-Mao growth in the corpus of family law has a fairly clear meaning. The 1950 Marriage Law and the system of family law which it attempted to put into place were important elements in the generation of political support for the new regime. However, in the post-Mao era the rapid codification of family law has been in large part prompted by the leadership's concern to ensure stability, order and continuity in social life. In addition, the family has once more been installed as the basic unit of social life, a position enhanced by the declining social significance of the danwei or unit. The law has therefore been used to reshape the family in order to make it more consistent with the new economic and social orders being created in the era of reform. There is also a concern to strengthen the rights and interests of the socially vulnerable, and this too has influenced certain areas of family law.