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Abstract:
China's new Labour Contract Law is the most significant reform to the law of employment relations in more than a decade. Its final form emerged following highly contentious debates over the terms of earlier drafts - debates involving not only a range of Chinese actors, but also international business lobbyists and labour organisations. The Law as enacted represents a compromise between the competing demands of these many interest groups.

This article briefly surveys the reasons for the enactment of the Labour Contract Law, the polarised drafting process, and the key matters it addresses. The assessment presented is that the Law is, overall, a necessary and beneficial contribution to the regulation of work in China. However, the article highlights four areas likely to be subject to ongoing contention and dispute. Those areas concern (1) unilateral changes to working conditions; (2) forms of contracting and termination of employment; (3) labour hire; and (4) non-compete clauses.

China, contract, law, reform, employment, labour, work conditions, regulation, hire, termination, non-compete

Abstract:
From the mid 1970s, China's central authorities have become increasingly concerned at the rapid growth of prostitution and drug addiction, which have been characterised by the state as serious social order problems. Since introduction of the program of economic reform in 1978, a range of measures have been approved in an effort to control or eliminate these perceived problems. Amongst the measures adopted, specialist administrative detention powers of detention for education (shourong jiaoyu) of prostitutes and their clients and coercive drug rehabilitation (qiangzhi jiedu) of drug addicts have been reinvigorated.

This paper traces the reinstatement and expansion of these administrative detention powers in the reform era. It examines the ways in which the state's demand to maintain social order and stability and the policies implemented to achieve these social order objectives have influenced the development and legal form of these detention powers. Pre-reform political-administrative modes of regulation remain a dominant source of norms both in defining and exercising these powers. However, there is evidence to suggest a growing unease at the divergence between the regulatory form of these powers and the developing body of Chinese administrative law.

A study of administrative detention provides an example of how the Chinese state has managed legal reform in the context of social order. It illustrates how legal change in this sector has been influenced by what has gone before, by differing policy imperatives and by the interactions between different interested institutional actors.

China, prostitution, drug addiction, administrative detention, Chinese administrative law

Abstract:
In 1978, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) began a program of economic modernisation and reform, a core aim of which was rebuilding the Chinese legal system. The importance of this aim increased further in 1996, when the Party approved the program of 'ruling the country according to law' (yifa zhiguo). In a speech in 1996 and in his subsequent keynote address to the Fifteenth National Congress of the CCP in September 1997, Jiang Zemin advocated 'Us(ing) law to rule the country, protect the long-term peace and good order of the state (yifa zhiguo, baozhan guojia changzhi jiu'an)'. Subsequently, the Party adopted the slogan that 'ruling the country on the basis of law is the basic program by which the Party leads the people in ruling the country' (Zhu Rongji 1999:2). An increasingly important component of 'ruling the country according to law' has been a requirement that law provide the foundation on which state power is defined and exercised. That is, implementation of a system of law-based governance. The desire for formal legal legitimation of the exercise of the state's administrative power is captured in the slogan 'administration according to law' (yifa xingzheng). The process of constructing the legal system has, accurately, been described as 'an event of epic historic proportions' (Alford 1999:193). While reforms to the legal regulation of economic relations have taken place at a phenomenal rate, this chapter focuses on the slower, and arguably more complex, process of reforming state administrative powers, specifically one of the administrative detention powers of the Chinese public security organs (gong'an jiguan, also referred to in this chapter as the 'police') - detention for investigation (shourong shencha). This power is particularly interesting because it was ostensibly abolished by amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law in 1996.

China, reform, police, criminal procedure law

Abstract:
This book examines legal reform in China. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of the 'field', the increasingly complex and contested processes of legal reform are analysed in relation to police powers. The impact of China's post-1978 legal reforms on police powers is examined through a detailed analysis of three administrative detention powers: detention for education of prostitutes; coercive drug rehabilitation; and re-education through labour. The debate surrounding the abolition in 1996 of detention for investigation (also known as shelter and investigation) is also considered. Despite over 20 years of legal reform, police powers remain poorly defined by law and subject to minimal legal constraint. They continue to be seriously and systematically abused. However, there has been both systematic and occasionally dramatic reform of these powers. This book considers the processes which have made these legal changes possible.

legal reform, China, Bourdieu's concept, police powers, dentention powers