A Critical Appraisal of China’s ‘Four Comprehensives’ Grand Narrative

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

In China today,President Xi Jinping’s new grand narrative is framed by the widely publicised ‘four comprehensives’ (四个全面; ‘sigequanmian’). This narrative aims to : 1.build a moderately prosperous society; 2. deepen reform; 3. govern the nation according to law, and 4. tighten Party discipline. It is essentially a political narrative that tells a moral tale that legitimizes and glorifies the virtues of the present. It also attempts to shrug off mistakes of the previous dynasty. Drawing on the legal disciplines of economic law, international comparative law and the a priori analytic method of legal narrative analysis, this paper provides a critical appraisal of the ‘four comprehensives’, paying special attention to how the four principal strands of the narrative shape the directions of China’s socialist rule of law reforms and governance. Key words: Chinese law reform; four comprehensives; 四个全面; sigequanmian;socialist rule of law;legal narrative analysis; economic-law nexus, South China Sea.

Related collections

Author and article information

Contributors

John Garrick: Australia

Yan Chang Bennett: United States

Bio :

Yan Bennett is manager for the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China. She most recently worked at the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where she served as the assistant director from 2009-2015. Before coming to Princeton, Bennett was a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State and served overseas in China and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In China, she served as vice consul and had the opportunity to report on U.S. corporate labor practices, intellectual property issues, and the results of a municipal election in Guangdong Province. In Bosnia, Bennett served as special assistant to the ambassador and supported senior staff in achieving foreign policy objectives. She has received awards for superior performance from the State Department, including a personal commendation from Secretary Powell. As a legal scholar, she has a number of publications on China's legal reform and on the rule of law under the Xi administration. Bennett has a B.A. in Political Science and received an M.A. in International Affairs from the Elliot School at George Washington University. She holds a JD and practices in the areas of business and international law.

Journal

Title: UUM Journal of Legal Studies

Publisher: UUM Press

Publication date (Electronic): December 01 2015

Volume: 6

Pages: 1-11

Affiliations

[1 ]Macquarie University, Australia

Article

DOI: 10.32890/uumjls.6.2015.4584

SO-VID: f0af58bd-43ca-4d4c-8654-93fa920951ba

License:

All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

History

ScienceOpen disciplines: Labor law,International & Comparative law,History, Philosophy & Sociology of law,Civil law,General law,Law

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Labor law, International & Comparative law, History, Philosophy & Sociology of law, Civil law, General law, Law

Comments

Comment on this article

scite_