This research paper discusses the use in traditional China, especially during the Qing or Manchu dynasty (1644-1911), of mediation and other forms of dispute resolution.
For the most part in traditional China, civil disputes between private persons were resolved through alternative dispute resolution. The widespread use of mediation was dictated by the practical realities of Chinese rule. It was legitimized in the writings of the two principal schools of Chinese legal philosophy, Legalism and Confucianism. Recently reopened archival material --i.e. records of cases decided during the Qing dynasty and the Republic (1911-1949) suggest that as the Chinese polity began to undergo the process of modernization, including access to Western influences, local and county magistrates played a greater role in deciding civil cases than many scholars previously believed; however, mediation continued to play an important role in their disposition.
Roots of Chinese Traditional Law. China first came under centralized rule during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.--220 A.D.). Previously, factional and regional political struggles and incursions by barbarians from the North prevented the achievement of stable central rule. According to Macauley, "in China . . . systems of state power evolved without eliminating networks of power at the local level," what she called "the circumscribed power of the state" (2). This power-sharing was necessitated by China's vast territorial expanse and ethnic diversity in earlier times. Although it was true, according to Basic Concepts (1), that traditional China "was by no means a legally-oriented society," MacCormack said that "as early as the 7th century A.D., China possessed a highly developed and sophisticated system of public law and, from the 2nd century B.C. "a well-documented legal tradition" (1-2).
The Legalist school of legal thought which was dominant during the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 B.C.) insisted that ...