On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of New China, Zhang Jinfan was awarded the national honorary title of “People’s Educator.” He is a renowned Chinese jurist and legal educator, as well as a key founder and outstanding representative of the discipline of Chinese legal history in New China. Throughout his life, he has been dedicated to advancing research on Chinese legal history and cultivating talents for the rule of law.

Zhang Jinfan was born in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, in 1930. “I spent my childhood under the rule of the puppet state of Manchukuo, and at that time, history classes didn’t teach Chinese history,” Zhang Jinfan recalled. “‘To destroy a nation, you must first erase its history.’ The invaders wanted the Chinese people to forget their own roots.”

In 1950, Zhang Jinfan enrolled in the graduate program in Chinese Legal History at Renmin University of China. At the time, many teachers and classmates felt that his exceptional talent was somewhat wasted by pursuing the relatively obscure field of legal history. Yet, for Zhang Jinfan—who was passionately devoted to reading, especially historical works—this choice was nothing short of a great blessing. “Studying Chinese legal history allows one to gain a deep understanding of the profound heritage of China’s rule-of-law civilization. With its vast and enduring history and its remarkably rich civilization, China provides us with the very foundation of our confidence and the source of our strength. Upholding and promoting China’s outstanding traditional legal culture is precisely the responsibility I’ve chosen to shoulder,” said Zhang Jinfan.

Before 1979, three international symposiums on the history of Chinese legal systems had been held abroad, none of which invited scholars from mainland China to participate.

“We can’t allow our descendants to go abroad to study the history of Chinese legal systems!” In 1979, the founding conference of the Chinese Society for Legal History was held in Changchun, Jilin Province. At the conference, Zhang Jinfan proposed the idea of compiling a multi-volume “General History of Chinese Legal Systems.”

From then on, Zhang Jinfan took the lead in rallying academic forces from China’s legal history community. Over a period of 19 years, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to painstaking research and ultimately published the ten-volume work, "A Comprehensive History of Chinese Legal Systems," thereby laying the foundational and pioneering groundwork for the discipline of Chinese legal history in New China.

Not only does Zhang Jinfan write books and publish articles, but he is also a teacher.

Zhang Jinfan has achieved several “firsts” in the history of law in New China: he was the first to enroll doctoral students in legal history, the first to admit international doctoral students, and the first to admit doctoral candidates whose dissertations were based on original research. He also established the first—and currently the only—national key research center for the discipline of legal history.

After assuming the positions of Vice President and Dean of the Graduate School at China University of Political Science and Law, Zhang Jinfan advocated for the establishment of a training system aimed at enhancing graduate students’ academic standards and their ability to independently conduct scientific research. During his tenure, each graduate student was provided with funding annually to ensure participation in at least one academic conference per year.

“The most important requirement for young doctoral candidates is that their scholarly work should provide useful, scientific, and historically informed insights for addressing contemporary realities. This is precisely the purpose of studying legal history—the role of historiography is to shed light on the present,” said Zhang Jinfan.

He asks this of his students—and he himself puts it into practice. “The school asked me to serve as chief expert, and all I can do is to revitalize China’s outstanding traditional legal culture and tap into historical resources for today’s comprehensive governance according to law.”

In recent years, Zhang Jinfan has authored more than 20 academic articles from the perspective of comprehensively advancing the rule of law and creatively transforming and innovatively developing China’s outstanding traditional legal culture. “We must breathe new life into this precious spiritual heritage accumulated over thousands of years, thereby injecting greater legal impetus into the building of a modern Chinese civilization,” said Zhang Jinfan.

“Don’t be complacent, don’t slack off”—this is Zhang Jinfan’s famous motto for scholarly pursuit. “As long as my health holds up, I’ll keep reading more and doing more research,” Zhang Jinfan always says.