The Roman Law Tradition and Its Future Development in China

In Late Qing Dynasty, the Chinese Law Family was disintegrated and the Western Law was introduced into China. Finally, China adopted the European continental Roman law tradition. This paper analyzes the reason for China’s borrowing of such legal system and probes its development and reform in the later years. It also tries to answer the question of what will be the possible impact upon the current Chinese legal system since China now implements the policy of “one country two systems” in order to realize its reunification with Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. In addition, it will make some prediction upon the future development of Chinese legal system. Translated from Tsinghua Law Review, Vol. 2, 1999 (in Chinese)