China's Comparative Constitution *

This chapter seeks to explain how and why comparative constitutional law scholarship has had greater engagement with China&s;s constitution than the previous periods. It also discusses the comparative implications of the national accounts of China&s;s constitution. The liberal constitutional discourse generated a traditionalist reaction—the Confucian approach. The advocates of Confucian constitutionalism believe that the liberal constitutional proposals “all lack native features.” Constitutionalism and authoritarianism are not clearly bifurcated institutional configurations. Partial authoritarian practices may emerge within a stable constitutionalist polity; conversely, partial constitutionalist practices may emerge within a stable authoritarian polity. China&s;s constitution has often been referred to as an illustrating case in large-N comparative constitutional studies. The Chinese case has been recurrently discussed in the recent large-N study, in which Versteeg and her collaborators explore a range of constitutional strategies of presidential term-limit evasion used by 234 incumbents in 106 countries since the year 2000.