Law And Social Control: Chinese Ancient Tradition Of Combining Li With Law And Its Contemporary Enlightenments. Quan Wenchang (Jurisprudence)

"Social control thought the law"is the basic idea of social control for countries in the today's world. However, for specific country with different historical tradition, law as a major means of social control, still need other supplementary means. In China, moral play a big supplementary role to law because of the large influences from traditional ethics. The formation and continuance of any system have their specific historical conditions. Chinese ancient traditional social control mode of combining li with law has its historical rationality. Through the analysis of generation, development and functional mechanism of Chinese ancient traditional social control mode of combining li with law, the thesis has the following enlightenments: if a country want to maintain stable social order and realize good social control, it must establish social ethics system in accord with social formation at the same time when it perfects its legal system. Moreover, only when the national system of legal norm is in tune with system of social ethical norm, national legal norm can have the social basis for the implementation of social control, and social control can obtain the due effect.Affected by globalization, legal norm gradually become the same. In the development road of the global common law rules, it is social control modes now and future to manage state affairs according to law, to build a country and society under the rule of law. After the reform and opening up, China is building on the social foundation of managing state affairs according to law. The market economic system and the socialist democracy are subjected to improvement, and the development of culture is greatly influenced by tradition, which led to the disagreement between law and social basis. Especially the uptodateness of legal system is not in accord with that of human being, and institutional legal culture conflict with ideogenetic legal culture, which led to the deletion of the value foundation of ruling by law and the necessities for cultivation of the legal faith, and which led to the weakness of humanistic foundation and the necessities for strengthening to shape citizens'character. In view of the above problems, the author thinks that at present Chinese should take social control mode combing managing state affairs according to law with promoting law by means of moral.Promoting law by means of moral refers to the strengthening of socialist ethics construction and moral education to national on the premise of managing state affairs according to law. It can improve citizens'moral appreciation and shape their virtues. Thus, it can cultivate the legal faith and strengthen the self-consciousness of law-abiding in order to promote concrete effects of legal implementation in social control. The cultivation of rational self-discipline under the moral order can provide ethical support for ruling by law. Regulatory system, including law, can not achieved by compulsory force, it must base on the most people's voluntary obedience. Otherwise, it is difficult to set up the effective authority of system and legal order. In contemporary Chinese society, the ethical order is no longer the system of traditional moral order. Today's moral order should base on modern citizens'ethics system containing right, responsibility, freedom, equality and public spirits. Modern citizens'ethics are the important factors which constitute citizens'character. If a society has no good citizen's character, its systems can not operate effectively. So social ethics construction should be strengthened in order to cultivate good citizen's character and provide effective moral support. So, it can achieve the combination of managing state affairs according to law with promoting the law by means of moral and realize the good social control.