Countries As A Matter Of Civil Subject Discussed

The state has dual roles, one as an administraative subject and the other as acivil subject. On the one side, the state uses its administrative power to regulate thesociety, and on the other side, the state is involved in the market economy as anequity subject. This dual status could result in many contradictions in reality.Sometimes, the state will play the roles of "athlete" and "referee" at the sametime. Therefore, it's hard to put the state, which holds great administrative power athand, at the equal place with other civil subjects. And the state can use its power tointerfere the field of civil rights excessively, resulting in impairing the other party'slegal rights. However, neither in theory nor in practice is the state's role ofadministrative subject and civil subject dearly defined in China. Should and couldthe state be the civil subject, is of great significance on the successfulimprovements of our socialist market economy.First, the thesis analyzes some aspects of the nation as the civil subject inpractice. For example, in view of the proprietorship, the state serves as theuniversal owner of national property; in the field of credit and obligation, the stateserves as a creditor or obligator mainly by launching national debts andgovernmental purchasing; and in the field of damage and compensation, the stateassumes national liability for compensation due to state organs and theirpersonnel's duty torts.Following the analysis of the situations above, the author questions the stateas a civil subject And the author gets the conclusion that in our legal system, theright of state ownership is not a private one, launching national debts andgovernmental purchasing are closer to using administrative power by thegovernment than being a civil subject; and the state is not one party of civil liabilityin the field of national compensation. The state should not be treated as a civilsubject, for to regard the state as a civil subject would make it difficult todistinguish civil rights from administrative power, and private interests from publicinterests and would damage our market economy.Then, the author tries to express a number of related questions from theperspective of legal theory, including what kind of relationship should be between civil society and political state; what kind of state is needed by the contemporaryChinese market economy—as the subject of public law or the subject of privatelaw, and so on.Last, the thesis illustrates that, asthe subject of public laws, the targets of thestate is supposed to reach those social administrative targets and avoid the dual roleas both public subject and private subject to damage the regulation of the marketeconomy. And the author offers a clearer pattern of the role played by the state asthe subject of public laws in the context of our socialist market economy.