Black's Theory on the Behavior of Law Revisited IV: the Behavior of Qing Law

Black's theory on The Behavior of Law (1976) predicts and explains the behavior of law with five social variables: stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control. This research project tested one aspect of Black's theory—the relationship between law and culture—with historical data from the Qianlong reign (1736–1796) in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) of China. The research question posed was whether and to what extent the cultured people in Qing-China were subjected to a different and more favorable judicial process in speech crime prosecution cases? Two hypotheses were tested: (1) The judicial process was compromised in favor of the cultured. (2) The emperor and the officials were more involved and invested more judicial resources in the processing of cultured cases.The testing of Black's theory was achieved by the analysis of 68 speech crime case files from emperor Qianlong's reign for evidence of favorable treatment of the cultured. The testing was conducted with the cultural status of the speech crime defendants as an independent variable, seriousness of crime as a control variable, and the Qing judicial process as a dependent variable. The concept of law was operationalized as Confucian ethics, emperor's justice policy, Qing law, and judicial practices. The concept of culture was operationalized as education-official standing, i.e., the cultured being officials, gentry, and scholars and the less/non-cultured being students, commoners and eccentrics.The findings of this research show that the cultured were afforded a more protective judicial process. Specifically, the judicial process was compromised in favor of the cultured and the emperor and officials devoted more judicial resources (time and effort) in the processing and disposition of the cultured cases. The findings provided for a first confirmation of Black's theory of law in China, i.e., that the cultured people were treated to more law in the Qing courts.     

Growing Strong in the Practice of ＂Going Global＂--An Interview with Ren Xiaojian,CEO of the Creat Group

REN Xiaojian, CEO and director of the board of the Creat Group, concluded after analyzing the challenges and opportunities for Chinese private enterprises in the global financial crisis, ＂The capital support represented by the RMB 4 trillion government stimulus package is basically a feast for large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. The government＇s resource allocation policy is basically inclined towards state-owned enterprises, and the enterprises in monopolistic industries are basically all state-owned. In contrast, most private enterprises are engaged in highly competitive industries. Seen from this perspective, as the global financial crisis spreads from the virtual to real economy, the private economy has been most vulnerable to damage.＂     

民事证据司法解释存在的问题及完善

最高人民法院《关于民事诉讼证据的若干规定》系统地解释了民事诉讼证据的有关问题。但其仍存在一些不足和问题。本文提出相应的建议和解决方案。     

Technovation in Taiwan: Implications for Industrial Governance

No longer able to compete with China and Southeast Asian economies on the basis of cheap skilled labor, Taiwan has begun to explore new industrial sectors, such as biotechnology and the life sciences more generally, as key areas for development. The notion that biotech has been “targeted” by the government naturally conjures up images of the postwar developmental state and its mechanisms for industrial governance. Indeed, the resiliency of the East Asian developmental state model has been the focus of much recent debate ( Wong 2004 ), which begets the question: Does the developmental state still matter in Taiwan, and if so, specifically what role can it play? The government’s current effort in facilitating biotech industrialization provides an idea case through which to reappraise the developmental state, and specifically its role in leading industrial transformation in this uniquely knowledge‐intensive sector.