Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2015

 

China’s Treaty Relations with Foreign Countries and Changes in Late Qing Law

(Abstract)

 

Li Yumin

 

The establishment of treaty relations between China and foreign countries following the Opium War broke down China’s unitary legal system and thus became a basic factor in changes in late Qing law. The interaction between treaty stipulations and domestic law as the two transformed each other was a special kind of legal change with a marked semi-colonial character, but it did at the same time serve to some extent as reference material for the establishment of the legal system. Some slight revisions in the Great Qing Legal Code reflect the twofold influence of the backwardness of Qing legal reform and the effect of treaty relations on late Qing law. Although the long discarded bayi (Eight Deliberations) law was reintroduced, its mission ultimately vanished from Chinese legal history. Treaty relations forced China to learn from and absorb Western law in order to establish a relatively complete modern legal system that “was valid both in China and abroad.” At the same time, this involved various limitations and disadvantages.