China does not have a federalist system of government. Nevertheless, with deepening reform and openness, China's political system in terms of central–local relations is functioning more and more like federalism. Federalism as a functioning system in China has been understudied. This paper defines the political system existing in China as defacto federalism, and attempts to explore the sources and dynamics of this defacto federalism. China's defacto federalism was mainly driven by two related factors, i.e. decentralization and globalization. This paper argues (...) that while economic decentralization in the 1980s led to the formation of defacto federalism, globalization since the 1990s has accelerated this process and generated increasingly high pressure on the Chinese leadership to institutionalize existing defacto federalism. (shrink)

Reforms in post-Mao China have led to the rise of social movements and collective action. The FalunGong movement, a semi-religious movement, in particular has caught worldwide attention. Indeed, social protests have become a norm in China.

The present age is an age full of problems. To answer the question what's law, we should focus on the study of the tension between facts and norms. The tension is reflected through two perspectives: 1) the asymmetry between facts and norms in epistemology; 2) the conflict between facts and norms in ethics. The first is universal while the second is uniquely Chinese. The existing views of law highlight epistemology, tending to give privileges to one of the two: facts or (...) norms, and making them irreconcilable. This paper would like to draw upon two essential elements of practice and use practice to address the ethical conflict between facts and norms, and use reflection to deal with the epistemological asymmetry between the two. This is what we call "a practical view of law" which reconciles facts with norms and takes "law is phronesis " as its core proposition. (shrink)