Supremacy Law should rule officials as well as ordinary citizens. This element is key to the rule of law. Instrumentalities Courts should be available to enforce the law and should employ fair procedures. Rule of law is also critical to some political systems, like liberal democracy, because it constrains arbitrary acts by government officials. No society is ruled perfectly by law, but anyone familiar with the Chinese legal system knows it does not conform with the above criteria by a long shot, despite steady assertions by the highest-ranking Chinese officials that rule of law is China s goal.
Chinese laws are often vague, confusing and inconsistent.
Authorities enforce the laws arbitrarily, and in many cases there is no practical recourse for unfair decisions. What no one can deny, however, is that motivated by a desire to promote commerce and foreign investment, China has made enormous strides in the last 20 years in legal reform. While major obstacles remain, China has gone from having virtually no legal system to one that often functions. Chinese and Western scholars have spilled much ink debating whether rule of law can exist in a one-party socialist state. Accepting as given that some form of rule of law is possible, it is nonetheless clear that certain types of situations will arise in a one-party system in which it will be exceptionally difficult to restrain the state, and rule of law will prove elusive.