Modernization Of Chinese Ancient Civil Law

Since the economic globalization bringing about the globalization of laws, it is necessary to constitute a civil law in demand of the social need in the course of modernization of laws. The key issue is to first make clear the domestic resource of laws and then make full use of foreign laws. From the early twentieth century to now, people have never reached an agreement on the existence of Chinese civil laws of ancient times, which shows the disparity in acknowledging the domestic resource of Chinese laws nowadays.The first part of the paper is about the reason why we should attach great importance to the domestic resource when constituting the modern civil law, and the critical juncture to constitute the civil law in the Chinese history. Chinese civil law should be a realistic, flexible, advanced and operable one in combine with the foreign and domestic conventions, ancient and modern conception of laws instead of being a part of "western centralization".In the second part, the paper endeavors to refute the opinion of non-existence of Chinese civil laws by figuring out the shortages of form and conception of western modern civil laws, and then proves that Chinese civil laws did actually exist in the past from the perspective of the essence, features, forms and source of civil laws. Then the paper further proves that the opinion of non-existence of Chinese civil laws based on its inequality is incorrect because all the old civil laws are unequal and ancient and modern laws are quite different from each other. What's more, the paper again demonstrates its incorrectness in view of the object of laws because the modern principle that all laws should be constituted in line with the need of whole country does not conform to the principle that laws are constituted for scholars which had been acknowledged by almost all ancient people.In the third part, the paper expounds the essence of the propriety and its relation with punishment and moral in detail. It is the propriety that is the source of Chinese civil law and gave birth to its unique characteristics.In the fourth part, the paper makes studies respectively on the favorable and unfavorable influence of the domestic resource of civil laws, and pointed out the significance of domestic resource in the course of modernization of Chinese laws, its magnificence and the possibility of modernization in practice.To conclude, this paper aims at providing some suggestions for the study on the modernization of Chinese laws by means of exploring the Chinese ancient civil laws and its way to modernize.