The Old Latin maxim ex oriente lux, ex occidente lex (from the East, light; from the West, law) evinces a deep assumption about the relationship between the East and law – that is, although civilization began in the East, the West is the source of rationality and law. Indeed, much of this assumption lies in present-day “rule of law” programs as they are often transported from the West to transitional economies in the East and South. Rule of law, with its rationality and predictability, is said to be fundamental to a market economy. Its ability to check abusive arbitrary powers is believed to go hand in hand with democratic polities. Pointing to today's industrial democracies, reformers have concluded that rule of law is necessary for economic development and political liberalization.

Yet the challenges to these assumptions are numerous, ranging from whether there is such an East/West divide and, if so, whether the East is really antithetical to law; to the definition of “rule of law” itself and whether legal institutions are indeed transplantable. Furthermore, even as the rule of law has become a new rallying cry for global missionaries, reformers recognize that the rule of law is an exceedingly elusive notion. If “it is not already firmly in place, the rule of law appears mysteriously difficult to establish.”

In its thirty years of economic reforms, China has challenged the pairing of law, markets, and democracy.

If how a society decides its disputes is “a ritual of extreme social significance,” then China's thirty years of legal reform can inform our understanding of how the Chinese state relates to its society and how Chinese citizens relate to one another. Since 1978, China has embarked on legal reforms to promote law as a main mode of dispute resolution. But critics argue that China is establishing legal institutions more to promote economic development and coalesce state power and less to empower ordinary citizens. It is said that ordinary citizens shy away from formal legal mechanisms to resolve disputes because of an historical distrust of the law that is reinforced by recent experiences with Chinese courts. At the same time, the state's distrust of civil society institutions renders bottom-up initiatives unpromising.

This volume takes an on-the ground look at how civil disputes of ordinary citizens are being resolved in China today. In identifying what is going on at the ground level, this volume “disaggregates the Chinese state and society” to focus on the hows and whys – that is, the process of “law in action.”