CHINESE LEGAL INSTITUTIONS AND WILDLIFE - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 90

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C HINESE L EGAL I NSTITUTIONS AND W ILDLIFE
Wildlife continues to disappear in China notwithstanding [its] laws.
—J.C. Nagle
For a Western-trained lawyer encountering Chinese law for the first time,
a reaction other than perplexity is a bad sign—it means that one
has not really grasped the depth of the problem of understanding.
—Donald Clarke
Posted above an office door adjacent to an office complex in Tianjin some years ago,
an engraved sign identified the office as the “Promises-Keeping and Contract-Honoring
Unit.” Presumably, the sign provided assurance that, should some commercial transaction
run into problems, there was, indeed, a place one could go to ensure that promises once
made would be kept and that contracts already signed would be honored. The unstated
corollary, of course, was that outside of that office, all bets were off. In similar fashion,
wildlife is well protected under Chinese law. It's just when one gets to the countryside,
where wildlife might actually live, that protection breaks down.
Many Western-based observers of Chinese wildlife conservation (and indeed of the
Chinese environmental record generally), having once understood the existence of strong
protective legislation, wonder why Chinese cannot simply do what they say they'll do.
Upon learning that laws exist in China to protect wildlife, prohibit pollution, establish
a huge and strictly protected nature reserve system, encourage the use of recycling and
renewable energy sources, and foster other noble earth-friendly goals, Westerners scratch
their heads, baffled at how loosely these laws are enforced. Clearly, as Donald Clarke
has suggested, perplexity is appropriate. To reduce it somewhat, a short foray into the
Chinese legal tradition is in order.
For a Westerner interested in wildlife conservation and the law but unfamiliar with
the slippery terrain upon which the Chinese legal system sits, an understanding of the
fundamental differences between the Chinese and Western legal traditions is crucial.
The very concept of law has always been much more peripheral in traditional Chinese
thought than in the modern West, with law playing a far lesser role in ordering society.
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