All-powerful relationships corrupt faith in an uncertain law
- Source: Global Times
- [21:39 July 12 2010]
- Comments
By Zhou Sitian
China has a unique cultural tradition that emphasizes social relationships.
It's neither visible nor tangible, but has permeated into every detail of social life.
Take renting a house. In the West, if a landlord wants to rent out a house, and a tenant agrees to accept it, the two can make a deal by signing a contract, and then leave each other alone.
However, things are more complicated in China.
A landlord's concern goes far beyond rent. He may hope to figure out the tenant's personality, whether the guy is easy to get along with, and what he does to make a living.
Though the lease clearly stipulates all sorts of obligations for the tenant, the landlord would still worry. What if the tenant steals away the electrical appliances a week later? What if the guy is an alcoholic and vomits in the house every day?
In China, the landlord won't worry less if he holds a legal contract. He would rather develop a private relationship with his tenant, and make the guy feel obliged to treat the house well due to their friendship.
In the eyes of ordinary Chinese, human relationship is always warm, whereas laws stand on the opposite side and appear impartial and cold-blooded. This is why there are so many detestable "relationship cases" in the Chinese legal system.
For instance, once involved in a legal case, many people turn to a friend or a relative working in the court to help find out some insider information or deliver a bribe. In many cases of corrupt judges, they slipped up because they illegally helped their friends, relatives or former colleagues.
Interestingly, even though many resent the existence of guanxi (personal connections) in the legal system, once they are involved in a legal case, they will still first turn to their relatives to lubricate social networks, hoping to promote the case to develop in their favor.
If they cannot find any useful guanxi, most people will feel depressed and uncertain. Admittedly, there are some upright Chinese holding fast to the modern principle of the rule of laws. However, the social psychology of "relationship overriding laws" still prevails in China.
This makes the official statement that "in recent years, along with the deepening of law-based socialist governance, people's legal sense has generally been raised" sound a little unconvincing.
It's true that people are becoming more aware of the law. However, most people just know the letter of the law, but whether they obey them depends on whether they can benefit from them or not.
In China, people pragmatically use the law as a tool. For instance, if a neighborhood is to be demolished, people may feel pleased if they can take advantage of their social network and acquire several apartments in compensation. They don't care whether this is fair or not, or if it damages others who receive less compensation in turn.
However, as Harold J. Berman, a well-known US jurist, once said, law must become a faith, otherwise it will exist in name only.
Legislation cannot cover every field of social life, and there are always zones that cannot be restrained by a government's power. This requires people to have faith in the law.
Some may attribute the Chinese people's lack of faith in laws to their emphasis on the cultural tradition of human relationship. This is certainly one of the reasons. But there is no right or wrong inherent in a culture, and a culture can be gradually changed. Currently, a more important cause is that China is still short of a comprehensive legal system.
From the perspective of pragmatic philosophy, people's conscious obedience of law stems from such obedience's accordance with their own demands.
For instance, in theory people abiding by law can respect and protect their own interests, and enhance their credit and status in a social cycle, organization or group.
However, the reality is that various social networks override laws, and make it difficult to respect the law.
This, in turn, fosters the social atmosphere of appealing to guanxi. In such circumstance, how can people ignore the superior guanxi and believe in the law beneath it?
Consequently, in order to realize legal governance, besides improving legislation, China should also expel human relationships from the law and create an impartial legal system.
The author is a Shanghai-based lawyer. viewpoint@globaltimes. com.cn
