This article examines the PRC's post-Cultural Revolution project of legal development, the largest such undertaking in world history. It commences with a review of the achievements and shortcomings of legal construction in the PRC over the past two decades. The article then probes the rationale for and nature of this project, in so doing endeavoring to situate it historically. In its final section, the article suggests ways in which we might think of assessing China's efforts at constructing a legal system within a single generation.
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