Restorative Justice and Chinese Traditional Legal Culture in the Context of Contemporary Chinese Criminal Justice Reform

Abstract

The restorative justice movement of recent decades has largely developed in Western countries (Van Ness 2002). The present study examines the Chinese Confucian traditional philosophy and legal cultural values that are compatible with the philosophy and principles of restorative justice and analyzes the specific principles of the Confucian traditional legal culture that were conducive to restorative justice practices. It explicates several major Chinese contemporary programs and practices which are compatible with modern restorative justice and explains how the Chinese Confucian traditional legal cultural principles continue to influence criminal justice policy within the context of contemporary Chinese criminal justice reforms. The study suggests that unlike the typical Western restorative justice movement, which is a response to the problems of justice sys-tem, the main impetus for the development of China’s restorative justice is its Confucian tradi-tional legal culture. The restorative justice movement has grown rapidly in the past twenty five years. It has been estimated that there are about 1,000 restorative justice programs in the world and at least eighty countries have adopted some form of restorative justice program in response to crime problems (Van Ness, 2005). As an important

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