Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping And Jiang Zemin Legal Thought

Along with the historical process of the revolution and construction in China, three generations of central leading groups were founded. Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, the representatives of the core of the three generations, probe into and expound the legal system with the careful judging of the situation. Through the expounding and analysis of the main ideas, features, historical backgrounds, historical roles of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin's legal thoughts as well as their successive relationship, the paper presents a clear line of the New China's legal construction and development. From which we discover that it is a transitional process - from ruling of man to ruling of law, which is full of hardships. Both success and failure are experienced.By combining the legal fundamentals of Marxism and the practice of Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong made a pioneering and foundational exploration on Chinese socialist legal construction, which made great contribution to the legal construction. However, his legal thoughts are dispersed and some of them are limited. On the whole it is rule of man not rule of law.As the general designer of Chinese reform and opening and socialist modernization construction, Deng Xiaoping succeeded and developed Marxist legal theory, especially the legal thoughts of Mao Zedong. He made a systematical design of legal construction on the basis of summarizing domestic and international historical experience and adapting the international environment, features of epoch and the practice of Chinese modernization construction. His thoughts are extremely rich and systematical with rule of law as its essence, which set a solid foundation for the establishment of rule of law strategy and has historical significance on Chinese socialist legal construction.Jiang Zemin comprehends and grasps the essence of Deng Xiaoping's legal thoughts. Also he has courage to absorb and utilize the governing experience of ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign,therefore brings forward the idea of rule of law and governing strategy that constructs socialist nation under rule of law. Furthermore, he systematically expounds how to construct socialist nation under rule of law. The establishment of rule of law strategy is the significant milestone of our socialist legal construction, meanwhile, it solves the problem of how to govern socialist nations in the history of international communist movement, and enriches and develops the theory of scientific socialism.