Chapter 38 Chapter 5 The Spirit of Jiang Pingfa——Only Bow to the Truth

In my country's legal circles, Professor Jiang Ping is a leading figure.Since the end of the 1970s, he has devoted himself to the transformation of my country's legal thought and theory, and constructed a modern legal theoretical system initially suitable for China's national conditions; in 1985, he presided over the drafting of China's "Declaration of Rights" - "General Principles of Civil Law" ", became the main enlightener of the concept of "General Principles of Civil Law" in my country and the founder of civil law theory.Later, people called him, together with Mei Zhongxie and Xie Huai, two other masters of Chinese law, the "Three Masters of Civil Law" in China.

"General Principles of Civil Law" is a legal document formulated to protect the legitimate civil rights and interests of citizens and legal persons, correctly adjust civil relations, and meet the needs of social development. . After the founding of New China, relevant government departments began to organize forces to draft their own civil code in 1954. After more than two years of hard work, all drafts were completed.The draft is based on the Constitution and has been amended many times in accordance with the guidelines determined by the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. It is divided into four parts: General Provisions, Ownership, Obligations, and Inheritance, with a total of 525 articles.It emphasizes the special protection of socialist public ownership, especially state property, but ignores the due legal status of citizens' individual property ownership. Coupled with the interference of "left" mistakes, the drafting work was interrupted this time. In 1962, the government organized forces to carry out the second civil law drafting, and in July 1964, the "Draft Civil Law of the People's Republic of China" (trial draft) was proposed.Due to the influence of "Left" ideas for many years, the draft civil law (trial draft) is backward compared with the first draft in terms of structure and content.Most of the articles are empty political slogans; they only talk about obligations, not rights; they only talk about popular, not scientific, and so on. The "Four Clean-ups" movement that started in 1964 put the "draft" on the shelf again.Since then, due to the "Cultural Revolution", the drafting of civil law has been stagnant.

After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee drafted four civil law drafts after two years of hard work from November 1979 based on the prevailing situation.A few years later, the National People's Congress successively passed laws such as the Marriage Law, the Economic Contract Law, the Foreign Economic Contract Law, and the Trademark Law.The State Council and its relevant departments have also promulgated a considerable number of separate regulations.However, common matters in civil life need to be regulated, which led to the drafting of the General Principles of Civil Law.

In 1985, Jiang Ping, who had just served as the vice president of China University of Political Science and Law, accepted the task of drafting the "General Principles of Civil Law". He, Professor Tong Rou from Renmin University of China, Professor Wang Jiafu from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Professor Wei Zhenying from Peking University established a four-member expert group.Before drafting the "General Principles of Civil Law", he had widely publicized the meaning and function of "General Principles of Civil Law" through various forms, and answered many difficult questions about legal concepts.His preliminary research and a lot of work to resolve doubts made the formulation, adoption and implementation of the "General Principles of Civil Law" proceed smoothly.

In August 1985, they completed the first draft of the "General Principles of Civil Law"; in November, the draft "General Principles of Civil Law" was submitted to the 13th meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for preliminary deliberation.According to the suggestion of the chairman and the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the Law Committee of the National People's Congress and the Legal Work Committee held a forum in December 1985 to revise the draft of the "General Principles of Civil Law" with the participation of 188 civil law, economic law experts and comrades from relevant departments. meeting.After repeated discussions, the revised version of the "General Principles of Civil Law" was completed and officially passed at the Fourth Session of the Sixth National People's Congress on April 12, 1986.

The "General Principles of Civil Law" is regarded as "China's Declaration of Rights", which once again endows Chinese people with dignity.Jiang Ping, Tong Rou, Wang Jiafu and Wei Zhenying are honored as the "Four Civil Law Mentors" in the legal circle due to the outstanding performance of the "General Principles of Civil Law" expert group. In 1987, on the first anniversary of the implementation of the "General Principles of Civil Law", the National People's Congress Legal Work Committee held a symposium. Tao Xijin said: "Now we have criminal law, civil law, criminal procedure, and civil procedure. The only difference is administrative law and The Administrative Litigation Law has been established, and work in this area should be strengthened in the future.” After hearing this, Wang Hanbin, vice chairman of the committee, immediately said, “Let this matter be left to Mr. Tao.” After the meeting, Tao Xijin suggested that Jiang Ping take the lead, so Jiang Ping was appointed as the team leader, The "Administrative and Legislative Research Group" was established with two professors, Luo Haocai from Peking University and Ying Songnian from the University of Law, as the deputy heads.At that time, Jiang Ping wanted to come up with an "Administrative Law Outline" similar to the "General Principles of Civil Law", but later found it difficult, so he proposed to learn from the experience of civil legislation, and first create an administrative procedure law, so as to promote administrative substantive law. The promulgation of family planning law, etc.After several years of work, the "Administrative Litigation Law" that "the people sue the government" was finally promoted.

Jiang Ping's outstanding performance has won a high reputation in the legal circles and left a deep impression on the senior leaders of the central government. In 1988, Jiang Ping was elected as a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and concurrently served as the deputy director of the Legal Work Committee of the National People's Congress. For more than 20 years, Professor Jiang Ping has also presided over or participated in the legislative work of a series of other important laws in my country.He was the expert drafting team leader of the "Contract Law" promulgated in 1999 and the "Trust Law" promulgated in 2001, and participated in the "State Compensation Law", "Company Law", "Securities Law", "Negotiable Instrument Law" and "Partnership Enterprise Law" "Sole Proprietorship Law" and other legislative work.Although he is now over seventy years old, he still holds an important position as the head of the expert drafting group of the "Property Law" and "Civil Code".