Great Qing Legal Code

Legal code of the Qing empire (1644–1912)

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Great Qing Legal Code
Chinese name
Hanyu Pinyin	Dàqīng lǜlì
Wade–Giles	Ta4-ch'ing1 Lü4-li4
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization	daaih chīng leuht laih
Jyutping	daai6 cing1 leot6 lai6

Manchu nameManchu scriptᡩᠠᡳ᠌ᠴᡳᠩ
ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ‍‍ᡳ
ᡶᠠᡶᡠᠨ ‍‍ᡳ
ᠪᡳᡨᡥᡝ
ᡴᠣᠣᠯᡳAbkai

The code resulted from a complex legal culture and occupied the central position of the Qing legal system. It showed a high level of continuity with the Tang Legal Code, which indicated an active legal tradition at the highest level of Imperial Chinese bureaucracy that had existed for at least a thousand years.^[2]

The Great Qing Code comprises 436 articles divided into seven parts, further subdivided into chapters. The first part (Names and General Rules) is a General Part, similar to that of Germany's Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, which contains the general legal rules, principles, and concepts applied to the rest of the Code. The other six parts are named after the Six Ministries of government, and each part contains laws that are perceived as applicable to each ministry.^[3]

1. Names and General Rules, Articles 1–46 – includes laws on the Five Punishments (art. 1) and the Ten Great Wrongs (art. 2)
2. Laws relating to the Board of Personnel, Articles 47–74 – includes laws on the System of Offices (ch. 1) and Official Rules for Carrying Public Administration (ch. 2)
3. Laws relating to the Board of Revenue, Articles 75–156 – includes laws on Marriage (ch. 3–4; art. 101–107) and Taxes (ch.7; art. 141–148)
4. Laws relating to the Board of Rites, Articles 157–182 – includes laws on Sacrifices (ch. 1) and Rules of Demeanor (ch. 2)
5. Laws relating to the Board of War, Articles 183–253 – includes laws on Guarding the Palace (ch. 1; art. 183–198) and Military Affairs (ch. 2; art. 199–219)
6. Laws relating to the Board of Punishments, Articles 254–423 – includes laws on Homicide (ch. 8–10; art. 282–301)
7. Laws relating to the Board of Works, Articles 424–436 – includes laws pertaining to Construction (ch. 1) and Dikes (ch. 2)^[4]

The Five Punishments in the Code contained in Article 1 are:^[5]

1. Punishment of beating with the light bamboo
2. Punishment of beating with the heavy bamboo
3. Penal servitude
4. Punishment of exile
5. Penalty of death

A traditional Chinese legal system was largely in place during the

The Qing Code was in the form of exclusively a criminal code. Its statutes throughout stated prohibitions and restrictions, violations of which were subject to a range of punishments by a legalist state. In practice, however, large sections of the code and its sub-statutes dealt with matters that would properly be characterized as civil law. The populace made extensive use (perhaps a third of all cases) of the local magistrate courts to bring suits or threaten to sue on a whole range of civil disputes, characterized as "minor matters" in the Qing Code. Moreover, in practice, magistrates frequently tempered the application of the code by taking prevalent local customs into account in their decisions. Filed complaints were often settled among the parties before they received a formal court hearing, sometimes under the influence of probable action by the court.

The Great Qing Legal Code was the first written Chinese work directly translated into English.^[6] The translation, known as Fundamental Laws of China was completed by English traveller Sir George Staunton in 1810. It was the first time the Qing Code had been translated into a European language. The French translation was published in 1812.^{[citation needed]}

The

In the late Qing dynasty, there was a concerted effort to establish legal codes based on European models as a part of the Self-Strengthening Movement. Due to the German victory in the Franco-Prussian War and because Imperial Japan was used as the model for political and legal reform, the adopted legal code was modeled closely on that of Germany.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 20th century, with the advent of the "Constitutional Movement", the imperial government was forced by various pressures to modernize its legal system quickly. While the Qing Code remained law, it was qualified and supplemented in quick succession by the

In 1912, the collapse of the Qing dynasty ended their 268 years of imperial rule over China, along with 2,000 years of Chinese imperial history. The Qing court was replaced by the Republic of China government. While some parts of the Qing Code and other late Qing statutes were adopted for "temporary application" by the

The newly founded Republic of China adopted the existing German-based legal codes from the Qing era, but these codes were not immediately put into practice. Following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China came under the control of rival warlords and had no government strong enough to establish a legal code to replace the Qing Code. Finally, in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government attempted to develop Western-style legal and penal systems. Few of the Kuomintang codes, however, were implemented nationwide. Although government leaders strove for a Western-inspired codified law system, the traditional Chinese preference for collective social sanctions over impersonal legalism hindered constitutional and legal development. The spirit of the new rules never penetrated to the grass-roots level or provided hoped-for stability. Ideally, individuals were to be equal before the law, but this premise proved more rhetorical than substantive.

Law in the Republic of China on Taiwan today is based on the German-based legal system brought by the Kuomintang. The influence of the Qing Code manifests itself in the form of an exceptionally detailed penal code, with many offenses punishable by death. For example, in addition to the offense of piracy, there are also "piracy causing grievous bodily harm" (punishable by death or life imprisonment under Section 3 of Article 333 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of China (中華民國刑法)), as well as "piracy causing death" and "piracy with arson, rape, kidnapping or murder" (both entail mandatory death penalty under Section 3 of Article 333 and Article 334 of the Criminal Code). One legacy from that bygone era is the offense of "murder of a family member" (e.g. patricide and matricide), which entails life imprisonment or death under Section 1 of Article 272 of the Criminal Code. This applied even to minors under 18 years old, until the abolition of Section 2 of Article 63 of the Criminal Code—which allowed for life imprisonment or the death penalty against minors committing crimes under Section 1 of Article 272—on July 1, 2006.

While the legal system in the

English Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Marriage Reform Ordinance

In Hong Kong, after the establishment of

Because there are still living concubines married before the Marriage Reform Ordinance (Cap. 178), and their rights (of inheritance, and the inheritance rights of their sons and daughters) are respected by the Hong Kong legal system (even after the 1997 handover), the Great Qing Legal Code is still admissible in evidence when handling legal cases relating to events that occurred before 1971.

• Chinese law
• Traditional Chinese law
• Law of the People's Republic of China
• Law of Taiwan
• Five Punishments
• Ten Abominations

Works cited

• Jones, William C. (1994). The Great Qing Code: A New Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press.
  OCLC 28337540
  .

Further reading

• Bodde, Derk, and Clarence Morris, eds. Law in Imperial China: Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing dynasty Cases. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

External links

Chinese Wikisource has original text related to this article:

大清律例

• The Qing Code, Wallace Johnson, ed.
• Gray, John Henry (1878). Gregor, William Gow (ed.). China, a history of the laws, manners, and customs of the people, ed. by W.G. Gregor. London: MACMILLAN AND CO.
  ISBN 9780404569303. Retrieved 24 April 2014. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help
  )
• Gray, John Henry (1878). Gregor, William Gow (ed.). China: A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the People, Volume 1. London: Macmillan and Company. Retrieved 24 April 2014.
•  This article incorporates text from Life among the Chinese: with characteristic sketches and incidents of missionary operations and prospects in China, by Robert Samuel Maclay, a publication from 1861, now in the public domain in the United States.