SOCIALIST LEGALITY AND LEGAL CULTURE IN SHANGHAI: A SURVEY OF GETIHU

ID:	TARP-179
Title:	SOCIALIST LEGALITY AND LEGAL CULTURE IN SHANGHAI: A SURVEY OF GETIHU
Source:	Canadian Journal of Law and Society Volume 9 No. 2
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	1994
Pages:	0
Author(s):	Pitman B. Potter
Keywords:	China, equality before the law, legal norms, legal reform, private enterprise, Shanghai, legal culture, justice
Abstract:	The paper examines attitudes among independent business operators (getihu) in Shanghai in the context of Chinese official doctrine on legal reform. Getihu are independent business operators engaged mainly in small retail and service activities like sale of vegetables to providing machinery repairs. They resemble China’s emerging private sector and they are a useful focus of inquiry on popular reception of official norms about legal reform and the potential for linkage between legal change and economic development in China. The pager suggests that the getihu are generally receptive to official norms about equality, justice and private law relations. But there is also a tension because of having doubts about the efficacy of these norms. The getihu seem nonetheless motivated to use them with the hope that they are useful in their struggle to get ahead. The factor of disenfranchisement from the established order has created a powerful incentive for the getihu to assimilate official doctrines of legal reform. This suggests that the linkage between legal reform and economic development in China is not automatic, but will depend on the particular conditions of legal and economic actors. This has implications for the importance of local conditions in causal links between forms of private law and economic development.
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