Polycontexturality for China’s Legal Development? Contending with Gunther Teubner

Abstract

In criticizing the World Bank’s recommendations for China’s private law reform, Gunther Teubner suggested “polycontextural law” as the best direction for developing the Chinese legal system. This model, according to Teubner, can reconnect sources of law to multiple autonomous social fields and reflect historical–cultural diversity. However, this Article argues that by proposing polycontextural law, Teubner implicitly privileges private law as the “linkage institutions” that can be used to deconstruct the traditional political–legal paradigm of the “[k]ing’s two bodies,” and he undermines the role of public law in redressing the unequal “irritation capacity” of different social subsystems and in founding the framework for greater responsiveness to social needs. In this respect, the polycontextural law model has not sufficiently comprehended the risks of “social exclusion” and “dejuridification” in a transitional society such as China, where the legal system, instead of evolving through recursive operations, is prone to being co-opted by power and money through their dominant media of influence.