...group and not at all in defending such rights against the state. What really concerned the law... were all acts of moral or ritual impropriety or of criminal...violations or disruptions of the total social order.-' In traditional China, then, there was little room for the development of the concept of civil law:...

...though this is to be surmised rather than explicitly discovered in the Chinese legal literature — were all acts of moral or ritual impropriety or of criminal...violations or disruptions of the total social order. The mere existence of the law was intended to deter the commission of such acts, but once they occurred,...