A long overdue reply to Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt’s criticism

This post is written in response to Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt’s criticism of the paper I presented at the 2015 European China Law Studies Association Conference. Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt works with Stéphanie Balme at SciencesPo, in Paris. The criticism I received from him is, thus far, the best and most sophisticated criticism I have ever received. I am not posting the response he sent me. Those who are interested in the question of how we should approach Chinese law may want to get in touch to explore possible ways to start a broader public conversation on this and similar points.

Here is, however, a summary of what Christopher wrote. Among others, my paper holds that principles in Western law are equivalent to “原则” in Chinese law, and therefore “Seeking Truth from Facts” functions as a legal principle.

Image result for Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt’s criticism

Christopher’s criticism takes aim at the question of what a “principle” and what a “原则” are, according to the paper. To understand a language, he writes, we have to live within it. Language posits us within a worldview and determines our horizon. Our horizon, however, expands when we enter a foreign language. Whenever we acquire a command of one or more foreign languages, we acquire the ability to live in between two or more different worlds, without negating the worldview our mother tongue has bestowed on us. The most interesting question, here, would be what happened to the speaker’s worldview, what does it mean to our use of language, which semantic detours and how many of them the speaker has to take when the general consensus prohibits the speaker or writer to use his true mother tongue. But, this question relates to the philosophy of language more than to anything else.

When we speak two or more languages, we find ourselves entangled in the problem of interpretation: when we translate from language A to language B, we automatically add an additional layer of interpretation to the meaning B has in the target language. This is a general problem, the critique says, evident in my acceptance of what a “principle” is, and in my projecting the meaning of “principle” onto yuanze 原则. “Principle” does not correspond to the meaning of yuanze 原则. yuanze 原则 was born within a specific horizon of meaning, one that has to be studied and understood. The paper I wrote criticizes the brutalization of concepts in Chinese law, the separation of concepts from the contexts that give them meaning but, the same brutalization is evident in my analysis of what “Seeking Truth from Facts mean”.





“because the meaning I have constructed for X according to how I see the world, is the meaning of “legal principle in a Western sense” [where “Western sense is clearly another construct”] then, whenever a Chinese person encounters X he will give to X the same meaning I gave to it or at least very similar one.”

This statement says more about the interpreter, and perhaps about the interpretive consensus within which the interpreter operates than it does about the explanandum. If this point is accepted, then the question remains of why I wrote a paper where paragraph 2 bends back upon itself. Differently stated: why does paragraph 2 tells us a lot about how we Westerners look at principles but, it doesn’t say anything about how Chinese people conceive of yuanze 原则?

2. After all, I have stated that one of my goals is performing what I playfully call “psychoanalyses” of the concepts and “mechanisms” I encounter. In other words, if those who make, interpret and use the law are historical beings whose goals include solving problems as these problems exist in their societies, perhaps their statements could be read à la letter.



(2) in theory, they may truly mean what they say but, they are in practice unable to achieve their purposes because they have adopted a different set of political principles would be problematic.

In the paper, I explained how I am trying to ‘listen’ to the political/legal system impartially:





It seems that the paper starts out on the right track but then, it derails as it falls back in the very same cognitive scheme it tries to avoid. Yet paragraphs 3 illustrates how “Seeking Truth from Facts” became among others a 原则 yuanze, and some of the meanings that those who use “Seeking Truth from Facts,” say “Seeking Truth from Facts” has. Isn’t this a contradiction I could have easily avoided?

To give an adequate response to Christopher’s criticism, an explanation of how I conceived the paper, and a disclosure of the intentions I had in mind as I set out to write the paper are necessary.

Image result for Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt’s criticism

3. To explain how I conceived the paper, I should try to explain how I read Chinese texts.

Here, the ‘how I read Chinese texts’ relates not to the techniques I have learned, and to those I am trying to develop (described here, in part). The ‘how I read’ in the context of this post relates to my perception of the text, and what kind of cognitive processes my perception of the text triggers.



Each unit of meaning may have been born at a different time, because of a variety of different reasons, and it may acquire one or more different meanings over time. The hypothesis that units without meaning exist in legal texts is a hypothesis I reject on very simple grounds:

If “shishi qiushi” really contained no information, then it wouldn’t have been carved on the stone placed at the East Gate of the People’s University (=Renmin University of China).


4. The intentions I had in mind when I wrote the paper were many. I wanted to give an example of how we may try to understand the information conveyed to us by all those linguistic units we do not really understand. (If we truly understood them, we would not dismiss them as Communist blabber without at least attempting to perform an analysis of what their meaning may be).

I wanted readers to understand how, in reality, principles are neither transcendent nor are they unchanging truths. Principles and 原则 are man-made. They are created in a specific historical, cultural, political, and social context in response to distinct needs，problems or wishes. That 原则 are man-made, and that principles are man-made too, given how they derive from experience and empirical observation, does not say anything as to whether one’s conception of law is consequentialist or deontological. What I found interesting about principles and 原则 is that both of them are ordinary words, words that have transcended the sphere of ordinary language to acquire a different kind of communicative function.

I am trying to work outside of all the approaches, and techniques of China studies, with the goal to unveil the cognitive frameworks I have been using for the past ten or twelve years as a result of being (among many other things) a “China scholar”, and possibly understand where they work, and where they don’t. Trying to step out these cognitive frameworks is possible only if one becomes aware of them first. Again, one can become aware of these cognitive frameworks by listening nonjudgmentally and impartially to what the field says.


One of my goals is understanding what “X” means and how it works, where X may be any concept or institution in China’s legal system. If research is collaborative, then generating some debate at least was essential to achieving this goal. Because of this reason, I deliberately placed a few fallacies, and elements of internal incoherence in the draft version of the paper. Among others, I took the provocative moves of:

a) stating that a semantic equivalence between “principle” and “yuanze” exists, without performing a semantic or etymological analysis of “yuanze”. In fact, I wrote what “Seeking Truth from Facts” means, according to what some of those who use “Seeking Truth from Facts” say it means but, I never said what “yuanze” means, according to what those who write or talk about “yuanze” say it means.

b) explaining what a principle means to “Westerners” by appealing to authority. In so doing, I projected an alleged and perhaps non-existent “Western view” of what a legal principle is on China, while at the same time decrying the use of Western standards to look at Chinese law.
