This book is an antecedent study on the task facing China's legal science, more strictly speaking — China's legal philosophy, in post-Cold War world structure. In broader terms, this is an academic study of China's own "identity" and future in the world structure. The author believes that from 1978 to 2004, in spite of its great achievements, China's legal science has at the same time had some of its grave problems being exposed. A fundamental problem is its failure to provide a "Chinese legal ideal picture" as the standard of and direction for evaluating, assessing and guiding China's law/legal development. This is an age of law without China's own ideal picture(s). However, why has China failed to have its own legal ideal picture(s)? Apparently this question in and of itself implies a question, both more directly and fundamentally, of China's legal science, namely why China's legal science has failed to provide China's own legal picture(s)? Or, as an internal critical approach may suggest (namely to critique China's legal science from the perspective of its promised objectives), where is China's legal science heading? Based on this, this book attempts to expound a standard to evaluate China's legal science through a theoretical discussion of this issue, and to further explore the possible direction for China's legal science beyond this age.
