Interpretation On The Law Culture Of People From The Perspective Of China

People plays an important role in Chinese traditional culture. In a sense, the main idea of Chinese ancient political thought is on people and the ancient political philosophy can be attributed to the thought of people, with the core value being people-oriented. In Chinese traditional culture, people has multiple meanings. On the one hand, the generalized people are those with official identity, including all the members of society who have no power and have different jobs. They are divided into several kinds according to their jobs, such as what mentioned in Guliang Zhuan.Chenggong Yuan Year, “There are four kinds of people in ancient times, including Shi, Shang, Nong and Gong”. On the other hand, people in narrowed sense means peasant since peasants have always been the subject of people in Chinese history. However, except these two meanings, people is also a political concept opposite to feudal official and monarch. Zhu Xi said, “People are common plebeians.” Xue Zong said, “People are the common ones.” Gu Yanwu said, “If there are more officials, people will be in a mess.” However, radically speaking, people in Chinese traditional culture are politically defined from the opposite perspective of monarch. Chinese traditional culture attached great importance to people, and since Shang Dynasty people-oriented thought had occurred. Later, a set of people-oriented thought came into development. But the family ethic relationships between father and son replaced the political relationships between monarch and people due to the essence of ethic culture and political ethic. Finally, the Confucian political ethics alienated the identity of people and led to the concept of subjects, and added servility into it. Then the autarchy and rule of rites formed the political practice way of monarch-ruled society. Therefore, democracy and rule of law had not come into development from the value of people-oriented thought.Besides, people is the core concept of Western political thought. Early in the ancient Greek, Aristotle said, “human beings are animals of the polis”. He started to discuss the relationships between polis(which is politics) and human beings(which is people). The formation of democracy and rule of law in western modern times is dependent on civic society(civil society)-political country and social contract. Therefore, people connote citizens, who are the subjects of rule of law. Under the rule of law, the rights of citizens are the core contents. The modern rule of law is surrounding people’s rights and power to some extent. So people is an important point to elucidate in the rule of law theory and a main part in the construction of modern rule of law theory. From the perspective of people, it’s not hard to find that, the natural law and social contract theory, which are the source of modern rule of law, are also development of people. Under the frame of democracy and republicanism, each citizen forms morality community through common individuality, which is also general will, and this whole process is the process of social contract. A country originated from society and people are the sovereigns. Citizens give expression to powers and functions of democracy of sovereignty through active participation in politics and at the same time they are also restricted fundamentally. In the development of western culture, citizens are not individuals with rights in the first place; it has its own development track. The western history naturally owns profound resources of rights and culture and is showed as inheritance in its historic evolution. Citizens occurred early in the polis times of ancient Greek when the right, democracy and rule of law laid thought foundation for western democracy and rule of law. The medieval cities reserved the kindling of freedom in the darkness, and with the development of commodity economy, the civil society which is corresponding to politic country occurred. Finally, the democracy and rule of law theory with the core value of freedom and right came into being and was spread to the world, becoming the irreversible world trend.In this trend, the connotation of people also deeply changed. With the termination of the feudal autocratic monarchy, the relationship between monarch and people also ended. The traditional idea that the monarch is superior and people are inferior under the monarch-people frame gave way to modern people’s rights under the structure of power-right. The traditional subjects were replaced by people and citizens and traditional subjects thought changed into citizen awareness. Citizens own basic human being rights and own right to public management and decision-making. They become the users of national power, fundamentally being individuals with rights. The evolution from subjects to citizens is not the evolution of title, but the fundamental change of connotation of people due to the mix of Chinese and western culture and change of society. However, different with western history tradition, China didn’t have the citizens who had right to political management and decision-making or the citizens who had individual rights in the modern western. Therefore, the real concept of citizens occurred in modern times. After entering the modern times, China opened its door under the gunboats of western countries. Faced with national crisis, saving the nation became urgent affairs. From Westernization Movement to Constitutional Reform and Modernization to May 4th Enlightenment Movement, from implements to institution to thoughts, western culture influenced China greatly. China’s feudal monarchy terminated and awareness of civil rights generated. The concept of subjects and subject-people in traditional society were ridded out and the modern concept of national people and citizens were brought in. Hoverer, citizen is the product of western, its development in China is different from western. It should be localized in China. On the one hand, under the background of Chinese legal construction, localization of citizen should be a part of legal construction. On the other hand, starting from China’s national condition, we should rely on interaction between government and market to cultivate environment for civil society. This is not only the need to cultivate Chinese citizens, but also the social foundation of China’s rule of law. Only in this way will the spirit of contract and right awareness permeate the whole society and make the contract relationship change genetic relationship, and then cultivate the civil society and realize civil awareness little by little. Driven by the external force of government and internal force of socialist market economy, China will eradicate the environment of subjects and cultivate local civil society, and then cultivate local citizens, and finally promote the process of democracy and rule of law of.