The 1982 Chinese Constitution

Several amendments to the constitution have been made since it was adopted in 1982, including an amendment to Article 5, to which was added a reference to "ruling the country in accordance with the law and building a socialist rule of law (Gittings and Whitfort 12). In response to growing public anger at human rights abuses, Article 33 was amended to include the wording, "the state respects and safeguards human rights." Articles 67, 80 and 89 were amended to remove the provision for declaring martial law and replace these provisions with a wider power to declare a State of Emergency, which can be applied under a much broader set of circumstances such as diseases and natural disasters.

The goal of the 1982 Constitution was to turn China into a socialist country, where priva

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altered to include the statement, "The People's Republic of China shall practice ruling the country according to law and shall construct a socialist rule-of-law state" (Gittings and Whitfort 16). However, socialist rule-of-law may be very different from rule-of-law as it is understood elsewhere, including Hong Kong. The concept of socialist rule-of-law includes adhering to the leading role of the Communist Party, and not multi-party politics. Article 2 of the constitution states that, "all power in the People's Republic of China belongs to the people" and this is exercised through the National People's Congresses (Gittings and Whitfort 16). Under this provision, all other branches of state in China, including the courts, are theoretically subordinate to the National People's Congress and its local counterparts. An explanation of why courts in China operate differently than those in Hong Kong and other countries can be seen in Article 3, which states that all state organs in the People's Republic of China must apply the principle of Democratic Centralism. These principles basically state that: 1) individual interests are less important than those of the organization 2) the minority must give way to the majority 3) low
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Approximate Word count = 1388
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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