Professor Zhu Suli gave us a successful lecture named “Rule the Family，Regulate the State”

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Written by Li Tingting. May 11th, 2015.

At 6:30 pm, May 7,2015, a lecture named “Rule the Family and Regulate the State” was given by Professor Zhu Suli, ex-Dean of Peking University law school and a well-known jurist, at No. 8 Lecture Theater in Wu Dong Campus. The lecture was given to all students and teachers of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics law school. Professor Zhu has written many famous law books and articles, such as “Law and Lecture” “How to Form the System” and “Constitutionalism and the Separation of Rights”. Professor Li Xueyao, Dean of SHUFE Law School, hosted the whole lecture, which lasted for about two and a half hours.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Zhu mentioned the topic of urbanization. He said the urbanization was firstly advocated by the central government just in the past few years, and trying to understand the essence of farming village organization is of great importance to govern each of organization, such as a school or an enterprise. Professor Zhu told us that the traditional villages were made up by sharing families, a family increasing in number to a big organization, so the blood relationship is the link among family members. However, the blood relationship is getting thinner and thinner. In the opinion of Professor Zhu, as time going by, the farming village organization can be regarded as geographical society or named acquaintance society instead of relative society. In acquaintance society, an organization is required, while governing an organization effectively is not an easy job. There are many risks and problems in a farming village organization. We’d better research on how to prevent these risks and problems.

Then Professor Zhu put forward that in traditional society the state has no time and no energy to govern village organizations, which leads that traditional village organizations have no right or money, therefore it’s not appropriate to govern them though law. Because many family members are relatives in the acquaintance society, if we use law to resolve disputes, the good relationship among them may be broken. However, if they are strangers, they can write IOUs when they borrow money from others. To clear loan relationship, Professor Zhu said that formal rules were not right or good choices in farming village organizations, which are in the form of relative society, acquaintance society or geographical society. He thought there were some ways to govern farming village organizations, and one is to take advantage of farther-child Relationship. Many of us view the father-child relationship as a dominance relationship, father to child, while Professor Zhu held the opposite opinion. He said parents would communicate with their children and even adopt their advice, so the dominance relationship just exits during a special period. Professor Zhu adopted Confucius’s saying that father-child relationship is changing all the time, which Confucius didn’t stipulate the rights and obligations to fathers. Confucian advocates that the father should be affectionate and the son should be dutiful, and Confucius thinks it’s an obligation instead of a right. Professor Zhu said that in fact it’s a long-term contract relationship. Why does father should be affectionate instead of mother? Professor Zhu referred to the opinion in sociobiology that the father always gives less caring to children than the mother does, so we have to make it a rule to enforce the father to take care of their children. In addition, why do we appeal that the son should be dutiful? Professor Zhu said the reason is that many people usually care their offspring rather than their parents. Our ancient governments preferred to carry out the filial piety with law, and put more attention to the son’s duty than the father’s affection, which some of us may think it is unfair. While Professor Zhu thinks this essence is fair. Because it’s the nature that the father is affectionate to the son, but when son has grown up, he may not be dutiful to the father. So it’s necessary to ensure it with law in farming village organizations. Some of our ancient governments view impiety as one of the ten heinous abominations. The unfair behavior still hasn’t been completely restrained. Professor Zhu thinks the ancient governments gain attention on the filial piety from the consideration on the human nature rather than the consideration on the logic.

During the following part, Professor Zhu introduced to us the topic of competition in farming village organizations. He said that peers in farming village organizations may have the same age or not. The blood relationship must be cut off after five generations. For one thing, competition can promote the development of society and economy. For another, excessive competition will lead to the loss of affection, which further will contribute to the breakdown of farming village organizations. Every coin has two sides. Professor Zhu thinks making effective measures to prevent the cutthroat competition is very important. Confucian comes up with a system that the whole society attaches more importance on the intelligence to ease competition. Professor Zhu looks it as an effective measure to strengthen the competitive power of the group. In the internal group, securing the competition among members and appropriately limiting the competition to make sure the stability of the group is an important rule.

According to this system, resources, rights and interests should be allocated according to each member’s ability. Even now in farming village organizations, the younger brother can’t get married unless the elder has been married. Furthermore, he thinks that although the economy is in rapid development, the social contradictions have been increasing as well, which has close link with excessive competition. In ancient society, the eldest son inherits system is another effective rule to ease competition. But Professor Zhu said Confucian doesn’t care who the elder brother is in the biological sense, and it is important that there must be a child playing the role of the elder brother in a farming village organization. There is a tradition that marriage between people born from the same surname is forbidden. In ancient times, people usually establish namesake villages to prevent the marriage of same surname. Professor Zhu used several examples to illustrate the dangers of this kind of marriage, and he said that nowadays prohibiting staff to fall in love at the same office is also reasonable to some extent.

At last, Professor Zhu told us that it was very difficult to use the law to resolve rural problems in China, and lawyers and judges weren’t willing to involve in rural legal affairs, which is the problem to be solved by modern legal system. Besides, he appealed that analyzing problems and events in our daily life with the academic point view is a required quality for a person who learns law.

Before the end of the lecture, Professor Zhu gave us some time to raise questions, and he answered all of them seriously and minutely. The lecture ended up with warm applause.

Published：2015-05-11 Hit：503