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China Republican China
Following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China came
under the control of rival warlords and had no government strong
enough to establish a legal code to replace the Qing code. Finally,
in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang forces were able to suppress
the warlords and gain control of most of the country
(see Republican China
, ch. 1). Established in Nanjing, the Guomindang
government attempted to develop Western-style legal and penal
systems. Few of the Guomindang codes, however, were implemented
nationwide. Although government leaders were striving for a
Western-inspired system of codified law, the traditional Chinese
preference for collective social sanctions over impersonal legalism
hindered constitutional and legal development. The spirit of the
new laws never penetrated to the grass-roots level or provided
hoped-for stability. Ideally, individuals were to be equal before
the law, but this premise proved to be more rhetorical than
substantive. In the end, most of the new laws were discarded as the
Guomindang became preoccupied with fighting the Chinese Communists
and the invading Japanese.
Data as of July 1987
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