Chinese law is one of the oldest legal traditions in the world. The core of modern Chinese law is based on Germanic-style civil law, socialist law, and traditional Chinese approaches. For most of the history of China, its legal system has been based on the Confucian philosophy of social control through moral education, as well as the Legalist emphasis on codified law and criminal sanction. Following the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China adopted a largely Western-style legal code in the civil law tradition (specifically German and Swiss based). The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 brought with it a more Soviet-influenced system of socialist law. However, earlier traditions from Chinese history have retained their influence.

The word for law in classical Chinese was fǎ (法). The Chinese character for fǎ denotes a meaning of "fair", "straight" and "just", derived from its water radical (氵). It also carries the sense of "standard, measurement, and model". Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris held that the concept of fǎ had an association with yì (義: "social rightness"). Yan Fu, in his Chinese translation of Montesquieu's De l'esprit des lois published in 1913, warned his readers about the difference between the Chinese fǎ and Western law: "The word 'law' in Western languages has four different interpretations in Chinese as in lǐ (理: "order"), lǐ (禮: "rites", "decorum"), fǎ (法: "human laws") and zhì (制: "control").

A term which preceded fǎ was xíng (刑), which originally probably referred to decapitation. Xíng later evolved to be a general term for laws that related to criminal punishment. The early history Shang Shu recorded the earliest forms of the "five penalties": tattooing, disfigurement, castration, mutilation, and death. Once written law came into existence, the meaning of xíng was extended to include not only punishments but also any state prohibitions whose violation would result in punishments. In modern times, xíng denotes penal law or criminal law. An example of the classical use of xíng is Xíng Bù (刑部, lit. "Department of Punishment") for the legal or justice department in imperial China.

The concept of state oversight persisted throughout the imperial period, into the republican period, and can still be seen acting today.

Unlike many other major civilizations where written law was held in honor and often attributed to divine origin, law in early China was viewed in purely secular terms, and its initial appearance was greeted with hostility by Confucian thinkers as indicative of a serious moral decline, a violation of human morality, and even a disturbance of the total cosmic order. Historically, the people's awareness and acceptance of ethical norms was shaped far more by the pervasive influence of custom and usage of property and by inculcating moral precepts than by any formally enacted system of law. Early emperors embraced the Legalist ideal as a way of exerting control over their large, growing territory and population. This process was integrated with traditional Chinese beliefs in the cosmic order. Behavior fitting within the responses set by fǎ was the correct behavior. Xíng states the potential costs to the individual of exceeding them and imposes penalties for these actions.

The imperial period was characterized mainly by the concept of law serving the state as a means of exerting control over the citizenry. In the late Qing dynasty there were efforts to reform the law codes by importing German codes with slight modifications. This continuous effort was amplified in the republican period resulting in the Provisional Constitution of 1912 which included the idea of equality under the law, rights for women, and broader rights for citizens in regard to the government. The onset of the communist period rolled back the development of individual rights with the primary concept of law returning to that of a tool of the state. The Cultural Revolution devastated the ranks of intellectuals and legal professionals. It took until 1982 for the idea of individual rights to reemerge as a significant influence on Chinese law.

The current constitution was created in 1982. Article V states that no organization or individual is above the law and Article III makes the People's Congresses and state administration responsible to the people, paving the way for later efforts to allow enforcement of individual rights. Passage of the Administrative Litigation Law of 1987 created legal recourse for individuals from arbitrary government action which was previously unavailable. Despite the deep-seated norm against legal proceedings, litigation in the Chinese courts has increased dramatically in recent years. The continuing weakness of courts, resulting from their dependence on the local government for financial support and enforcement, undermines the effectiveness of these remedies. This has also begun to change with China's initiatives to increase legal training and the professionalism of the judiciary.

One avenue of individual appeal from government action which is the custom of xìnfǎng 信访 (or shàngfǎng 上访) or petitions by citizens to the individuals officials for change. The continuing wide use of xìnfǎng reflects the fact that many officials are still able to avoid legal sanctions and the underlying avoidance of the legal system, as well as the personal ability of officials to personally intervene to change unjust results. Recently xìnfǎng has been institutionalized to some extent with the central government mandating that every level of administration establish a xìnfǎng office to handle petitions and report them up to high levels. Scholars have noted that xìnfǎng today functions more as an informational collection system for the government than an effective review mechanism.