Now, let's talking about the Chinese legal tradition. Chinese legal tradition, which became the dominant legal culture since mid 17th century for more than 200 years. Though, which is quite an important part of our legal culture. There were actually two ways that Chinese legal tradition were transplanted to Taiwan. In terms of the official law, which was brought by the Chinese political regime, including first, the Zheng Regime, and the second, the Qing-Chinese Empire in Taiwan, which last about 200 years. The other way is about the custom. The Han custom were brought by Han-Chinese or Han-Taiwanese immigrants. As we indicated before, large-scale Han-Chinese immigrants, began in the Dutch colonial period. Through the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese became the majority of the population in Taiwan, consisting more than 90 percent of the entire population. The Aboriginal people became the minority. When we talk about Chinese law especially, we are talking about the traditional Chinese law. What were traditional Chinese law? What were they different from the modern law we are familiar with? You might hear that there was no rule of law in Chinese legal tradition. In Chinese legal tradition, law or, fa in Chinese, was consider as a tool of the ruler or the emperor. It was a tool to govern the country or the empire. Emperors were not constrained by the law so in a sense there was no rule of law. Second important characteristic was the Confucius ideal. Imperial Chinese law was highly influenced by Confucius ideal, that in administration of justice, could vary according to the social class of people or their family relation. For example, the Qing code imposed heavier punishment on the accused of murder, if the victim were their parents and their grandparents. The third character is that the Qing code dealt in both the with administrative and the criminal affair, unlike the modern civil code, which was found on the Roman law tradition, and the focus on the civil affair. Civil affair, in traditional Chinese law such as contract or commerce, were almost entire ignored by the code. In other words, the code dealt with mostly the administrative and the criminal affair. So what kind of law the Chinese introduced to Taiwan? When the Qing ruled Taiwan, the official law such as Qing code were applied to Taiwan because Taiwan become part of the empire. Naturally, the Qing code was applied to Taiwan like the rest of the empire. In addition, there were some special law particularly made for Taiwan. For example, in Qing Taiwan, the important issue is the relation between the Aboriginal people and the Han people. The Qing government decided that in order to prevent the loss of indigenous land, Han people were prohibited from purchasing land from the indigenous people. However, the imperial Chinese law in action, was in fact quite different from the law in the books. In other word, the official imperial Chinese law, were not necessarily enforced on the ground. For example, when the magistrator on the ground, there was lawsuit, official law such as the Qing code were often regarded as reference or simply neglected. In other word, the official law, a lot of time were not enforced on the ground. Also, as for the special law, such as the law we discussed earlier, the law that banned sending indigenous law to Han people were constantly violated. Actually, as a result the indigenous law lost domestically in the Qing Taiwan, and then shrunk dramatically. In conclusion, the official and unofficial Chinese law became the dominant legal tradition in Taiwan, since the 17th century. Even nowaday, Chinese legal tradition is still an important part of Taiwan's legal culture. For example, you may know that the Article 272 of the current ROC Criminal Code, provides that the murder of parents and the grandparents will actually receive severer punishment, which might contradict the current modern legal system, based on the equality of people.
