Restorative justice in mainland China : a case study of the People's mediation committee

Abstract

Mediation has been a way of resolving disputes in China since ancient times. In traditional Chinese society, as small as two people vocalising a conflict, or as large as two countries waging a war, there is an intermediary group that counsels both sides of the conflict to achieve the effect of eliminating the dispute. Therefore mediation is a kind of wisdom that originated from the ancients. In the mid-20th century, Australia, the United States and other local jurisdictions adopted a series of methods for juvenile delinquency or minor offences to make up for the victim's loss and reduce the impact of justice on the subsequent lives of some offenders, and mediation, as one of the main measures of restorative justice, has also gradually taken to the stage of history. This thesis focuses on the mediation system in modern Chinese society, and seeks to understand the characteristics of the mediation system and the actual operation of the mediation system in contemporary China through exchanges with active mediators, and at the same time comparing it with mediation in restorative justice in the West, and probing into the underlying social, economic, and cultural reasons for the differences and discrepancies.