After celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Day, there comes a spring of the rising glow and bloom of everything. In this joyful new spring, China Law is with you in your new crusade in the year of 2012.
When the next year comes along, China Law’s first issue will be the 100th issue of the magazine since its birth in 1994. For China Law, this unusual occasion will be a great moment deserving commemoration and celebration. Therefore, in the year 2012, we will, with greater enthusiasm, with greater sober-minded rationality, and with a broader vision, present to you best-written articles, and favorable planning ideas, in ushering in the great movement of celebrating the publication of the 100th issue of China Law. We hereby also expect you ? all respected readers of China Law, to put forward your valuable opinions in the one-year countdown leading to the publication of the 100th issue of China Law.
How time flies! At the start of 2012 ? the 12th year of the 21st Century, we have inadvertently realized that we virtually seldom use the wording of “The New Century”, which means that we have actually become accustomed to the 21st Century, or that we have already created what can be a basic pattern of development in the 21st Century ? a high degree of flow and openness. We have become accustomed to rapid growth in the flow of human resources. As a result, all means of public transportation are now fully loaded with passengers. Walking on the street, you will definitely see numerous people like you going somewhere in a hurry. We are accustomed to rapid growth in the flow of goods. As a result, there is a rapid mushroom of shopping websites on the Internet. Trying to place an order for an Apple product on the Internet, you may realize that you are always the unlucky guy who fails to get an order every time. We, more significantly, are accustomed to the rapidly growing popularity of microblogs. Logging on the Internet to learn of something that happened merely three minutes ago, you will discover that someone already released a piece of news on it through his/her own medium three seconds after it took place. This is the 21st Century of ours ? a new age that could be imaginable only in an abstract way but could not specifically feel in the 20th Century.
It is the type of rapid growth in flow and openness that has brought about new challenges and new visions to the law of the China and the whole world, including the emergence of new patterns of traditional legal disputes, such as microblog-related infringement of the right of reputation; including the emergence of new ways of media publicity of traditional cases, in which some big cases are always in the vision of the public, and in which it will be very difficult to block the transparency of a big case no matter how you try to do so; including the emergence of new ways of publicity of adjudication and conclusion of cases, e.g. through release of court judgments in numerous cases through the Internet; and including the emergence of new modes of communication between legal institutions and the public, e.g., the use by police in many Chinese regions of the extremely easy and interesting Taobao Mall shopping websites system in urging fugitives to surrender themselves to police.
More significantly, flow will prove to be a fast-track for rapid promotion of the process of urbanization in China. How can it be impossible for new types of disputes to emerge in such a great shift from agricultural civilization to industrial civilization and information civilization? It is flow that will rapidly push China onto the fast-track of globalization. As far as the source of knowledge for legal circles is concerned, there has gradually come a new era for Chinese legal circles to synchronously learn or draw on legal knowledge and information from abroad. Before huge flow, someone worry that the emergence of new types of disputes may negatively impact basic aspects of Chinese society, while others worry that China is not open enough. In reality, such worries are justifiable. This is because, without worries, it could probably be difficult to give rise to favorable new solutions. Meanwhile, such worries are unjustifiable. This is because it is flow that just serves to indicate ongoing social progress. Since we have created flow and progress, we can definitely create the best solutions. Law, with its role of best interpretation of expectations, is emerging as one of the choices for the creation of best solutions.
The international community must realize that Chinese law is taking on new looks along with the emergence of the aforesaid new developments in the 21st Century. It is advisable for the International Community to take a comprehensive and changing perspective in understanding Chinese law.
This issue of China Law carries addresses by leaders of legal institutions at the ceremonial annual Opening of the Legal Year in Hong Kong, through which readers can learn of new developments in the rule of law in Hong Kong. This issue of China Law also carries articles written or signed by Zhao Bingzhi, vice-president of the International Association of Penal Law and president the Criminological Research Council of China Law Society, Rao Geping, executive vice-president of the Chinese Society of International Law, and Liu Jianwen, president of the Finance and Tax Law Research Council of China Law Society, on the status quo of China’s criminal law, and the Basic Law and budgetary law of Hong Kong, as well as their analysis of the trend of development of these laws. Also carried in this issue of China Law are a comprehensive analysis by Professor Liu Shude, a senior justice with the Supreme People’s Court of China, of judgments in criminal cases issued by Chinese courts, and a first batch of guiding typical cases promulgated by the Supreme People’s Court. Although these cases themselves probably appear to be relatively simple and unadorned, the promulgation of them by the Supreme People’s Court just signifies that the application of legal precedents in justice in China has entered a new age of typical case guidance. Therefore, the guiding typical cases promulgated by the Supreme People’s Court deserve to be collected and published by China Law in commemoration. In this issue of China Law, readers can also read an analysis by CITIC Securities Senior Deputy CEO Lu Qing of frontier issues about the securities law of China.
On this occasion of publication of China Law’s first issue of 2012 leading to the publication of the 100th issue of the magazine in 2013, we hereby wish you a great pleasure in your reading in 2012.
标签：Preamble