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Barefoot Lawyer
A barefoot lawyer (Chinese: 赤脚律师 pinyin: chìjiǎo lǜshī) is a self-taught legal activist in China. Many barefoot lawyers are peasants who have taught themselves enough law to file civil complaints, engage in litigation, and educate fellow citizens about their rights.Melinda Liu"Barefoot lawyers" Newsweek, 4 March 2002. The term is a variation of the " barefoot doctor"—farmers with minimal formal training who nonetheless provided essential medical services in rural China during the Mao era. Barefoot lawyers provide free legal services, and in many instances take on controversial or politically sensitive cases—such as tackling corruption by local authorities—that more established legal professionals may be reluctant to pursue. Notable examples of barefoot lawyers include the blind self-taught activist Chen Guangcheng, and Guo Feixiong.Human Rights Watch Walking on Thin Ice28 April 2008. Background Since the legal reforms of the late 1970s and 1980s, the Communist ...
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China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or ...
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Forced Eviction (China)
Forced eviction in the People's Republic of China refers to the practice of involuntary land requisitions from the citizenry, typically in order to make room for development projects. In some instances, government authorities work with private developers to seize land from villagers, with compensation below the market price. In many cases, they are also offered alternative housing instead of or on top of monetary compensation. Forced evictions are particularly common in rural areas, and are a major source of unrest and public protest. By some estimates, up to 65 percent of the 180,000 annual mass conflicts in China stem from grievances over forced evictions.Elizabeth C. EconomyA Land Grab Epidemic: China’s Wonderful World of Wukans, Council on Foreign Relations, 7 February 2012. Some citizens who resist or protest the evictions have reportedly been subjected to harassment, beatings, or detention. The rate of forced evictions has grown significantly since the 1990s, as city and cou ...
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Chinese Law
Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world. The core of modern Chinese law is based on Germanic-style civil law, socialist law, and traditional Chinese approaches. For most of the history of China, its legal system has been based on the Confucian philosophy of social control through moral education, as well as the Legalist emphasis on codified law and criminal sanction. Following the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China adopted a largely Western-style legal code in the civil law tradition (specifically German- and Swiss-based). The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 brought with it a more Soviet-influenced system of socialist law. However, earlier traditions from Chinese history have retained their influence. Chinese legal tradition The word for law in classical Chinese was ''fǎ'' (法). The Chinese character for ''fǎ'' denotes a meaning of "fair", "straight" and "just", derived from its water radical (氵). It a ...
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Weiquan Movement
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for AIDS victims, environmental damage, religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment. Individuals involved in the Weiquan movement have met with occasionally harsh reprisals from Chinese government officials, including disbarment, detention, harassment, and, in extreme instances, torture. Authorities have also responded to the movement with the launch of an educa ...
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Law Of The People's Republic Of China
The Law of the People's Republic of China, officially referred to as the Socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, is the legal regime of China, with the separate legal traditions and systems of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. China's legal system is largely a civil law system, although found its root in Great Qing Code and various historical system, largely reflecting the influence of Continental European legal systems, especially the German civil law system in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hong Kong and Macau, the two Special Administrative Regions, although required to observe the constitution and the basic laws and the power of the National People's Congress, are able to largely maintain their legal systems from colonial times. During the Maoist period (1949–1978), the government had a hostile attitude towards a formalized legal system, because Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) "saw the law as creating constraints upon their power." The le ...
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Henan
Henan (; or ; ; alternatively Honan) is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is also applied to the entirety of China proper. Henan is a birthplace of Han Chinese civilization, with over 3,200 years of recorded history and remained China's cultural, economic and political center until approximately 1,000 years ago. Henan Province is home to many heritage sites, including the ruins of Shang dynasty capital city Yin and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the Eight Great Ancient Capitals of China, Luoyang, Anyang, Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, are in Henan. The practice of tai chi also began here in Chen Jia Gou Village (Chen style), as did the later Yang and Wu styles. Although the name of the province () means "south of the ellowriver.", approximately a quarter of the province lies north of the Yellow River, also known as the H ...
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Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century, and had many notable editors-in-chief. The magazine was acquired by The Washington Post Company in 1961, and remained under its ownership until 2010. Revenue declines prompted The Washington Post Company to sell it, in August 2010, to the audio pioneer Sidney Harman for a purchase price of one dollar and an assumption of the magazine's liabilities. Later that year, ''Newsweek'' merged with the news and opinion website ''The Daily Beast'', forming The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. ''Newsweek'' was jointly owned by the estate of Harman and the diversified American media and Internet company IAC. ''Newsweek'' continued to experience financial difficulties, which led to the cessation of print publication ...
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Shandong
Shandong ( , ; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in History of China, Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural and religious center for Taoism, Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism. Shandong's Mount Tai is the most revered mountain of Taoism and a site with one of the longest histories of continuous religious worship in the world. The Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of the provincial capital of Jinan were once among the foremost Buddhist sites in China. The city of Qufu is the birthplace of Confucius and was later established as the center of Confucianism. Confucianism developed from what was later called the Hundred Schools of Thought from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Con ...
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Weiquan
The Weiquan movement is a non-centralized group of lawyers, legal experts, and intellectuals in China who seek to protect and defend the civil rights of the citizenry through litigation and legal activism. The movement, which began in the early 2000s, has organized demonstrations, sought reform via the legal system and media, defended victims of Human rights in the People's Republic of China, human rights abuses, and written appeal letters, despite opposition from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Among the issues adopted by Weiquan lawyers are property and housing rights, protection for HIV/AIDS in the People's Republic of China, AIDS victims, Pollution in China, environmental damage, Freedom of religion in China, religious freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the press, and defending the rights of other lawyers facing disbarment or imprisonment. Individuals involved in the Weiquan movement have met with occasionally harsh reprisals from Chinese government offi ...
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Environmental Issues In China
Environmental issues in China had risen in tandem with the country's rapid industrialisation, as well as lax environmental oversight especially during the early 2000s. China was ranked 120th out of the 180 countries on the 2020 Environmental Performance Index. The Chinese government has acknowledged the problems and made various responses, resulting in some improvements, but western media has criticized the actions as inadequate. In recent years, there has been increased citizens' activism against government decisions that are perceived as environmentally damaging, and a retired government official claimed that the year of 2012 saw over 50,000 environmental protests in China. Since the 2010s, the government has given greater attention to environmental protection through policy actions such as the signing of the Paris climate accord, the 13th Five-Year Plan and the 2015 Environmental Protection Law reform From 2006 to 2017, sulphur dioxide levels in China were reduced by 7 ...
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Ministry Of Justice Of The People's Republic Of China
The Ministry of Justice of the People's Republic of China is a government ministry under the State Council of China which is responsible for legal affairs. The range of responsibilities include judicial process, drafting legislation, developing legal framework, participating in national and international treaties, prosecution and sentencing. The ministry also ensure in the maintenance and improvement of China's system of law and justice and its national security. Administration The executive head of the ministry is the Minister of Justice. This position is equivalent to Attorney General in other countries. Organizational structure Agencies The (司法部监狱管理局) operates national prisons in China. As of 2015, Liu Zhenyu (刘振宇) is the head of the department.Home page
Bureau of Prison Administration. Retrieved on May 17, 2015. "局 ...
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Barefoot Doctor
Barefoot doctors () were healthcare providers who underwent basic medical training and worked in rural villages in China. They included farmers, folk healers, rural healthcare providers, and recent middle or secondary school graduates who received minimal basic medical and paramedical education. Their purpose was to bring healthcare to rural areas where urban-trained doctors would not settle. They promoted basic hygiene, preventive healthcare, and family planning and treated common illnesses. The name comes from southern farmers, who would often work barefoot in the rice paddies, and simultaneously worked as medical practitioners. In the 1930s, the Rural Reconstruction Movement had pioneered village health workers trained in basic health as part of a coordinated system, and there had been provincial experiments after 1949, but after Mao Zedong's healthcare speech in 1965 the concept was developed and institutionalized. China's health policy began to emphasize the importance of ba ...
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