Recalibrating the Measure of Justice: Beijing`s effort to recentralize the judiciary and its mixed results

Abstract

This article seeks to explain contradictions that have abounded in China`s judicial reform, i.e. the juxtaposition of liberal and authoritarian characteristics. Incompatible phenomena came about because the post-1999 judicial reform has failed to rein in local and departmental resistance in key issue areas. China`s national principals accepted the judicial system`s policy prescription of administering the country by law, with an aim to reclaim central control over local state agents. However, the national leadership`s varying political support to different aspects of judicial reform resulted in uneven outcomes and frustrated the goal of judicial centralization. In order to secure the goal, the national leadership has, since 2006, reinstituted more authoritarian policy imperatives into the existing liberal framework of judicial reform. China`s post-1999 judicial reform has therefore oscillated between merit-based professionalism and allegiance-oriented demand. Conceptual incompatibility eventually led to behavioral contradictions and delivered mixed signals.