Bridging disparate literatures on courts and the legal profession in China, Jonathan J. Kinkel introduces an innovative cross-disciplinary framework to understand the reality of Chinese politics and society. Fusing a variety of perspectives from social ecology, historical institutionalism, and empirical legal studies, Kinkel contextualises patterns of court reform within China's rapid economic and social transformations. This book's extensive case studies emphasise the dynamic expansion of the legal system in the post-Mao reform period and demonstrate that law firm growth in large cities, especially in the early twenty-first century, pressured courts at the local and national levels to enhance judicial autonomy. Advancing debates on the multiplicity of political-legal regimes, this book offers a comprehensive, empirical account of how reforms in both the public and private arenas can interact and operate alongside one another.

‘Kinkel’s Growth and Survival is the first book on China’s legal ecosystem that rigorously addresses the reality of China as a massive country with tremendous variation in local political and legal environments. It flips the standard thinking about markets needing courts and shows how the judiciary is equally impacted by the market for legal services. Not only will this work prove essential to future research on China and authoritarian judiciaries, but it will be invaluable to anyone who seeks to interact with or better understand China and its legal system.’

John Wagner Givens - Kennesaw State University

‘In his ground-breaking book Growth and Survival, Kinkel creatively bridges the balkanized scholarships on courts and the legal profession in China with fine-grained empirical data and an ecological theory of judicial reform. Situating Chinese courts in both space and time, the book is an important contribution to China studies, sociolegal studies, and research on authoritarian judiciaries.’

Sida Liu - University of Toronto