Chapter Six Neutrality, Power Distribution and Lan...
Mediation, as an efficient conflict resolution and management method, has survived and thrived for thousands of years in Chinese societies.It has also been a focus of attention for research and study among both the Chinese and western scholars for half a century.First, I will give a brief summary of the history of the study of Chinese mediation, and reveal the significance of this study in this first part of discussion, then I will devote three sections to a discussion of the findings from this study and future research directions.
Before ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) was formally proposed and popularized in the United States in the 1970’s, very few western scholars had carried out research on the uniqueness of Chinese mediation.Two American scholars, Cohen (1966) and Lubman (1967), forefathers of the study of Chinese mediation in the west, published their works on Chinese mediation before modern Chinese history; Cohen’s article was written before the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966, while Lubman’s study was during the Cultural Revolution.The former had an emphasis on the continuation of traditional Chinese culture, with roots in Confucianism, while the latter pointed out that modern China had broken with the tradition, and mediation started to serve a “political function”rather than a “social function”.Both Chinese and western scholars on Chinese mediation have focused on these two characteristics of Chinese mediation (Qiang, 2001).In recent years, there has been a growing interest among scholars in evaluating contemporary Chinese mediation.Lubman (1999) points out the conflict between litigation and mediation, and proposes that mediation model is based on “relation, morality and the law”(“情、理、法”).Fu (1992)states that Chinese mediators lost their power, and modern Chinese mediation is doomed to end.Palmer (1989), on the contrary, pointed out that post-Mao mediation is the renaissance of Chinese traditions and culture.Wall and Blum (1991) and Diamant (2000) proposed contrastive views towards the position of Chinese mediation in conflict resolution and management using quantitative and qualitative methods respectively.
The sum of the research on Chinese mediation has been of limited value; most Chinese and western scholars of Chinese mediation have compared and contrasted modern Chinese mediation with traditional Chinese mediation, Mediation during Mao’s period and mediation in Post-Mao period.Additionally,although the range of investigations have varied from comprehensive structured surveys of mediators in a single city(Wall & Blum, 1991) to informal examination of archives in “urban and rural areas”together with convenience sample of interviewees (Diamant, 2000), a limitation of most of the studies on Chinese mediation to date have relied on second-hand materials — mainly interviews of mediators and their reports,rather than transcripts of actual mediations.Given that the accounts used in scholarly discourse have relied on content separate from the mediation event itself, it is perhaps the greatest limitation of the bulk of scholarly research on Chinese mediation.Finally, most studies are carried out in such areas as law, sociology and anthropology, while studies on the language phenomena of Chinese mediation strategies have been rare up till now.(https://www.daowen.com)
This document evidences that the role that language plays in revealing the tactics that mediators use to achieve resolution is essential to better understanding what Chinese mediation is, how power is distributed and what role of neutrality plays.The book is the first report of diverse meditational situations from disparate areas of this large country, both urban and rural, have been recorded in real time, transcribed, translated and analyzed using discourse analysis.
Furthermore, the “ADR movement”in the United States during the past twenty years has produced a relatively complete set of rules and standards based on western legal system, with a rich body of theories from research (Goldberg, 2003).Using these theoretical frameworks and models to analyze Chinese mediation and to carry out comparative cultural studies will help people in both countries to understand Chinese mediation from a new perspective and to make better predictions about the future development of Chinese mediation.Although, some scholars (e.g.Wall & Blum 1991; Huang, 2007) have pointed out some differences between Chinese mediation and the mediation in the United States, systematic and in-depth studies on the fundamental differences have been lacking.This book, as emphasized in the Introduction, is not intended to solve the problem of differences and similarities in cross cultural studies but only intended to use American theoretical frame work on mediation to study Chinese phenomena of third party conflict resolution.
This book aims to make contributions and progress in these directions and several interesting conclusions can be made.I will discuss the findings of this study in the following three sections:The first section addresses the issue of different perceptions and value of neutrality by Chinese mediators, and why neutrality is not a concern for legitimacy of Chinese mediators.Additionally,this section will address how Chinese mediators achieve legitimacy in mediation.This section will also address the unique characteristics of Chinese mediation, as well as the socio-cultural indications; The third and final section will suggest directions for future research topics on today’s Chinese mediation.