Zhiqiu Lin

Ethnic differences in self-rated and functional health: does immigrant status matter?

The current study examines self-rated health status and functional health differences between first-generation immigrant and Canadian-born (CB) persons who share the same ethnocultural origin, and the extent to which such differences reflect social structural and health-related behavioural contexts. Multivariate analyses of data from the 2000/2001 Canadian Community Health Survey indicate that first-generation immigrants of Black and French ethnicity tend to have better health than their CB counterparts, while the opposite is true for those of South Asian and Chinese origins, providing evidence that for these groups, immigrant status matters. West Asians and Arabs and other Asian groups are advantaged in health regardless of country of birth. Health differences between ethnic foreign-born and CB persons generally converge after controlling for sociodemographic, socioeconomic status (SES), and lifestyle factors. Analysis of the data does however reveal extensive ethnocultural disparities in self-rated and functional health within both the immigrant and CB populations. Implications for health care policy and programme development are discussed.

Comparing Racial and Immigrant Health Status and Health Care Access in Later Life in Canada and the United States

Il y a peu de recherche comparative en existence sur les expériences de la santé et les conditions de groupes minoritaires au Canada et aux États-Unis, malgré le fait que les deux pays ont des populations racialement diverses avec une proportion significative des immigrants. Cet article explore les disparités raciales et immigrantes en santé et soins d’accès entre les deux pays. L’étude portait sur l’âge mûr et la vieillesse, compte tenu du changement et de la diversité croissante dans la politique de santé et les soins de santé, tel que Medicare. L’analyse de régression logistique des données de l’Enquête de la santé Canada/États-Unis 2002–2003 montre que l’effet conjoint de la race et de la nativité de santé – différences en santé entre indigènes blancs et étrangers blancs et non-blancs est en grande partie négligeable au Canada, mais considérable aux États-Unis. Americains indigènes non-blancs et américains nés à l’étranger au sein des groupes d’âge 45-à-64 et 65-et-plus expériencent une désavantage significative dans l’état de santé et aussi de l’accès aux soins, indépendamment de la couverture d’assurance-maladie et des facteurs démographiques, socio-économiques et de la mode de vie.

Judicial Interpretation of China's Supreme People's Court as “Secondary Law” with Special Reference to Criminal Law:

The analysis of the profile and role of Chinas Supreme Peoples Court needs updating. The Court is actively developing new interpretative formats that concern its relations with sister organizations and the National Peoples Congress. This article contextualizes these formats within Chinas changing institutional dynamics. China does not have a separation of powers; however, the Chinese system of justice does have its own separation of functions. The Court is playing a pivotal role from within the changing separation of functions, but the extent and quality of its independence from other organizations are open to question. In the context of deepening legal reform, the law is still incomplete and imperfect, and Court interpretation has often served as “secondary law.” In short, pragmatic judicial interpretations have sometimes preceded legislation by Congress. Remedy such as secondary law might be justified as absolute administrative necessity given the outstanding structural problems that characterize Chinas criminal justice system, but it has attracted internal criticism that argues for narrowing the function of the Court to a more tightly disciplined judicial role as well as for plugging the holes in legal process and structure by creating guiding case law and supporting the “freedom of judges decision making.”

The “ Falun Gong Problem”: Politics and the Struggle for the Rule of Law in China

This article examines the CCPs “ falun gong problem” with reference to PRC law and policy on “heretical cults,” paying particular attention to the implications of this problem for the ongoing struggle to establish human rights under the rule of law. Official PRC commentary contends that the falun gong not only committed criminal acts but also wilfully sought to undermine the rule of law itself. Human rights critics and agencies, such as the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, have, on the other hand, attacked the PRC for a “repressive legal framework” that threatens human rights. The “ falun gong problem” is an important chapter in the struggle for the rule of law in China, and it appears that the law has not been able to transcend the conceptual bias of past criminal law on counter-revolution. The related politicization of the law through a revived principle of “flexibility” challenges the internal process of criminal justice reform and the recent reform focus on the balance of human rights protection and public order.

The Making of a Chinese NGO: The Research and Intervention Project on Domestic Violence

Despite attempts to restrict and in some cases terminate registered organizations, new kinds of unregistered popular organizations are springing up in China.

SARS in Chinese Politics and Law

This article surveys the Chinese response to SARS in law and politics. Over the course of the spread of SARS the party-state qualified legal reform strategy that was designed to provide new human rights protection and to curtail the states arbitrary resort to policy and regulation without the benefit of law. This immediate response revealed the underlying problems of rule-of-law making, but the experience of SARS later informed the creation of new and improved law on infectious disease that reiterated the original assumptions of legal reform within a newly developing approach to the public management of health crises.

The Changing Substantive Principles of Chinese Criminal Law

The revised 1997 Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China (1997 CL) deliberately reflects the circumstances of the contemporary era of reform and transition from a planned to a market economy, and it is herein compared with the 1979 Criminal Law (1979 CL).’Our analysis focuses at the formal level on the identification and interpretation of the extent and nature of the substantive change to the underlying principles governing the content, application and purposes of criminal law. Given the recent nature of the formal changes, the issue of the practical application of the revised criminal law in the courts will inevitably have to await the empirical test of time.

Pluralized Jurisprudence in the Socialist Market

This book delves into the correlations and the contradictions between law and justice in China’s transitional market economy. Essentially it tells the story of a newly emerging jurisprudence, falixue. It puts the sharp contradictions and sophisticated nuances of this jurisprudence in the immediate context of politics. Every chapter in the story begins with a deliberate explanation of the internal Chinese perspective on the controversies confronting the legal community. The many points of controversy surrounding the purposes and values of Chinese law can be plotted along a single continuum with reference to two intersecting formal concepts – ‘the market economy is a rule of law economy,’ shichang jingji shi fazhi jingji, and ‘running the country according to law and establishing a socialist rule-of-law country’, yifa zhi guo, jianshe shehuizhuyi fazhi guojia.

Balancing Society and the Individual in Judicial Justice

The importance of reviewing Chinese criminal law and supporting legal discourse, so as to identify and confirm the meanings which the Chinese attach to their newly emerging legal concepts, is obvious.1 Professor Jonathan Hecht is one commentator who has noted the importance of monitoring and evaluating the Chinese criminal law system so as to create ‘a base of knowledge about Chinese law and practice from which to promote China’s compliance with international norms’.2 Western evaluation has often critiqued Chinese ‘state instrumentalism’ and ‘legal positivism’.3 The current transition in Chinese politics has generated controversy over two related questions. How best to describe the essential nature of the contemporary Chinese state: as, for example, ‘mature totalitarianism’, ‘consultative authoritarianism’ or ‘fragmented authoritarianism’? And is the contemporary trend more towards civil society or state corporatism? This chapter’s analysis asks a third, but obviously related, question. How does change to the underlying principles of the criminal law system factor into contemporary regime change, as the jurisprudential axis of the criminal law shifts from class struggle to market reform?

The Law and the Market at the Crossroads of Justice and Efficiency

The foregoing analysis has delved into the reasoning behind conceptual change in the evolving jurist understanding of the purposes of law in China’s transition to a ‘socialist market’. The analysis and interpretation of new legal thinking is presumed to be useful to the informed understanding of Chinese progress towards rule-of-law making. It accepts the study of the conceptual basis for contemporary legal reform as a legitimate area of academic inquiry; and it disputes impatient assumption that because not all of the new substance of law has been consistently operationalized in practice, the issues of contemporary jurisprudence and related human rights legislation are dubious. On the contrary, a correct and comprehensive knowledge base is necessary to a critically balanced external understanding as to how best to support the positive development of human rights and the rule of law in the complicated circumstances of China’s current marketplace.