Statement of Study  

   Program Applied: M. Juris

 “To live a meaningful life, to be well-read and to seek new knowledge.” I have always applied this axiom as the guiding principle of my academic endeavors. I belong to that generation of university students in China who graduated in the last decade of the 20th century, when the country was already implementing a market economy. As products of the educational system governed by market economy, most students have become correspondingly pragmatic-minded and regarded academic pursuit as a means of achieving material wealth. As far as I am concerned, I have stubbornly adhered to my deeply-entrenched belief that the purpose of intellectual endeavors and the meaning of life are to speculate on the ultimate, to create and to contribute. With such a long-cherished motivation, I would like to suspend my present career and come to a new starting point—to apply for admission into the world renowned Law School of your first-class university to embark on a M. Juris. I believe that I am a competitive applicant for your program based on my 4-year systematic education in law as an undergraduate, 7-year work experience in the related fields, as well as the skills and the ample potential to undertake legal practice and research that my education and work experience have endowed me with.

 My 4-year rigorous undergraduate program was done from 1992 to 1996 at the Law School of China XX University, the most prestigious law school in China. The solid and comprehensive coursework that I did for my program covered the theories of almost all the fields of jurisprudence. On top of that, I gradually developed a pluralistic perspective in my academic research under the influence of my advisor and other teachers, all of whom obtained advanced degrees in jurisprudence from the law schools in western countries. Out of my wide-ranged interest, I read extensively most of the western classics in law and philosophy including On Crime and Punishment, On the Spirit of Law and The Social Contract. Those classic works aroused in me the humanitarian feelings that have largely been suppressed by the existing education that I have been receiving in China. They ushered me onto the road of questing for a totally different kind of truth and for the first time in my life they heightened my deep concern for human welfare and my deep sympathy for the tribulations that human beings have to undergo.

 At the same time, law study made it possible for me to bring into full play my faculty of creative thinking. Two cases can illustrate this point. The first is that, as early as 1993, I independently developed The Management System of XX. This multi-level database management system, which incorporated such diverse functions as data collection, analysis, query and retrieval, could legitimately be considered a sophisticated high-tech information product considering the technical background of that time—the WINDOWS operation system had not come into existence and the computer technology was mainly dominated by the computers of 286 model. Being the first of its kind in my law school, the system significantly helped enhance the efficiency of jurisprudence research and for this I was awarded the honor of the Second Prize for Scientific Research Achievements of my university. The second case is my participation as a research assistant in our school’s Legal Regulation Research Project from 1995 to 1996. By consulting and translating a large amount of legal literature and doing extensive on-the-spot sampling investigations, I completed my thesis which was entitled XX. The significance of this thesis is that, at a time when the rule of law has not come to play an important part in the social life of the Chinese citizens and when people have hardly paid any attention to the issue of legal supervision (the concepts of the rule of law and legal regulation are just beginning to be the formal subjects of government concern now!), it touched on a very sensitive topic with foresight and pioneering spirit. The thesis received a “Class A” rating for its originality in that year.

 Upon graduation, I availed myself of various opportunities to undertake legal practice. First, I worked at the Ministry of Justice (XX Provincial Branch) where I examined and checked the foreign-related legal cases undertaken by lawyers across the province. Then I launched my own company where I was involved in providing legal consultations to local enterprises and organizations. I also served as a voluntary legal advisor to the Justice Promotion Foundation of XX Province. I derive immense satisfaction and a strong sense of personal achievement each time I offer legal aid to the people and the society with my professional knowledge and wisdom.

 On account of my prominent performance in work and my good command of English, I was sent in 1998 to attend an intensive common law training program sponsored by the XX. This training program was taught solely in English language by professors of American XX Foundation, scholars sent by XX Justice Department and XX and XX lawyers. In this program, I received systematic training in courses such as British and American contract law, trial systems, American uniform commercial code, business law and legal regulatory environment, American Constitution, etc. and I was given the honor of Excellent Graduate. In the course of this program, I participated in the XX International Symposium on Bankruptcy Law at which I presented a research paper entitled The Present Condition of China’s Enforcement of Bankruptcy Law. The paper captured the general attention of the participants. In retrospect, the 10-month training program, by familiarizing me with the British and American legal systems through the learning of major law courses, considerably broadened my vision and has laid a firm foundation for me to perform more advanced studies of the law courses concerning British and American legal systems.

 The most direct factor that has prompted me to this application decision is my one-and-a-half-year experience since 2000 of participating in examining and rectifying the market order of the futures transactions as a member of the work group of Improving and Rectifying XX Province’s Financial Sector. In my work, I came to discover that the development of China’s futures market faces serious legal restrictions. An obvious fact is that there exist many outmoded laws and regulations that are absolutely out of tune with the growth of China’s futures market. With the increasing integration of China and the rest of the world, represented by China’s accession into the WTO, there are simply too many provisions in China’s existing law that hinder the formation and the sustainable development of a standardized futures market in China. It is pathetic to find that the grave legal imperfections inherent in China’s futures industry epitomize just a tiny fraction of the dire reality that China’s legal system woefully lags behind the needs of social development of the country.

 To promote China’s perfection of its legal system, it is imperative to learn advanced knowledge of jurisprudence from western countries and to assimilate useful experiences from western legal systems. As home to the common law system and to modern capitalism, Britain is reputed for its time-honored legal system and for its unparalleled research in jurisprudence, with a wealth of in-depth literature and data collection. For a young man like me who is bent on the study of jurisprudence, it is inevitably the best place where to seek an advanced education. I wish to receive an overall education in jurisprudence while focusing on the legal regulation of the financial market, which is closely connected with my past career background. Through your M. Juris program I intend to proceed onto an M. Phil program. It is my expectation to comprehensively and perceptively study the legal spirit and the legal system of the common law so that I may be fully equipped to contribute my knowledge and expertise in jurisprudence to the construction of China’s forthcoming legal civilization and to the improvement of China’s legal regulation system.