Okay. Okay. Thank you, Professor Mueller for your kind invitation and introduction. I will start my

presentation now. Okay. Hi, everyone. Really good to see you today. I'm Ji Yu Li. It is a great

honor to speak at the AC Lecture Series and meet all of you today. As I told Professor Mueller,

I think this is such a wonderful forum to bring researchers all over the world together to discuss

this very important topic, culturally-oriented decision-making. As today's lecture goes on,

you may find that the decision-making process in the Chinese legal system is also deeply embedded

in the culture. Okay. Well, without further ado, I will get it started. So here is an outline of

what we are going to cover in this lecture. We will start with an overview of the function of law

in China, and then we will look at different forms of dispute resolution available to the Chinese

public. And afterwards, I will share some findings of my recent work co-authored with a colleague at

Hong Kong U. And then after a short break, we will have some time for Q&A at the end.

Okay. So as many of you already knew, China has been working on a long march

towards rule of law for decades. At a national conference on political and legal work in 2013,

President Xi basically stressed that the public trust is important in China and stated,

judicial organs must strive to make the people feel fairness and justice in every case.

Feeling fairness and justice is more about people's perception and evaluation of the legal system,

how effective the legal system is, and how competent it is. This is not an easy task,

because a person's evaluation may differ according to where they live. They live in urban China,

or are they living in rural China, also their individual legal consciousness, and why do they

have actual experiences with the courts or not. So over China's long history, there was a persistent

influence of traditional thoughts, which encouraged citizens to settle their disputes in private,

in order to maintain good interpersonal and societal relationships. Factoring Chinese legal

culture. If people are unaware of their rights and rarely use the law and the courts, how would they

have high expectations or even rely on the legal system? During the early time of China's reform

of building a rule of law society, the central government acknowledged the limited public

awareness of law as one of the major obstacles they had to conquer. So in order to raise legal

consciousness of the public, China launched a national campaign since 1985 to educate the public

what the law is and how to use the law as a weapon against the illegal actions. The statement

presented on the slide soon became a slogan and spread across regions of China.

So following the campaign, massive law dissemination activities were launched in urban and rural China.

These profile activities are carried out by local law enforcement authorities, college volunteers,

and the community service workers and so on. They often went to schools to teach students

some basic legal knowledge and pass on flyers in the community. So for example, as you can see from

the picture on the top left, so here in the picture you can see a local police officer explaining how

to prevent and fight against the campus bullies and protect the legal rights in a classroom.

So now we have more pictures about the dissemination of law. Okay, so this picture now you see a lot of

law was providing free legal advice and consultation on the street.

So here is also a movement of sending the law to the countryside emerged in China.

Grassroots courts often set up mobilized tribunals which are not actually trial units, but

bear the responsibility of hearing small claims and misdemeanor cases, as well as

handling some local petitions. This movement also represents an ideology of justice for the people.

Okay, justice for the people.

So now let's take a look at this picture.

So as you can see, three judicial workers were carrying this national album

to the village and setting up the tribunal. This is quite a symbolic move of sending the justice

to rural China, right, to the village. So in another picture, you basically can find the most

elements in modern cities, the most elements in modern cities courts, even the open trial.

Among people auditing the trial, you may find someone smoking cigarettes, drinking tea, wearing

sunglasses, and sorry, I don't have pointer, but if you can see this woman, this lady sitting

against the wall, having a nap under the sun. So I doubt whether you can see this level of