IV

Legal culture in ancient China has experienced a long history of development, with over 4,000 years' texts for examination, so the accumulated materials are very rich in such a long process. For example, some of primitive inscriptions on animal bones, bronze ware, or bamboo and wood slips, are related to legal field, other than documents that recorded the achievements of the legislation of the past dynasties and some works of the ancient philosophers.

As we can see, the material of legal culture in ancient China is actually voluminous and profound, which can be said to be one of the largest collections among the most ancient civilizations in the world. In addition, legal culture in ancient China was one of the most influential or in top of the world legal cultures in a long period of time. For instance, in the Tang Dynasty, the legal culture transmitted to some neighboring countries, such as Japan, Korea and Annan, who sent scholars, called kentoushi then, to China to study law. After they studied the law of the Tang Dynasty, the Discussions on the Laws of Tang Dynasty, those scholars took the knowledge of the Chinese legal cultures back to their own countries as an important blueprint of legislation. The ancient Chinese legal culture laid impacts on neighboring countries for almost a thousand years when they learned from our laws, varying from the Discussion on the Laws of Tang Dynasty to the Laws of Ming Dynasty. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, China has enjoyed five thousand years of glorious history and has accumulated a wealth of experience in administrating the country during prosperous times. Thanks to that, the construction of a socialist country under the rule of law today can take advantage of this inexhaustible resource and intellectual treasure. In conclusion, traditional Chinese legal culture, namely the legal culture of ancient China, is very rich in content and profound in accumulation, and still has a significant reference value even today.