Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the CCP.
> In China, its considered a joke career.
Is there a source for this or is more of a vibes thing?
source is my wife who spent the first 25 years of her life in China. So I guess vibes? But she was/is pretty academically rigorous, so I believe her.
So I would caveat it as if you are a really good strong student in China, it would seem that you are much more likely to go into Engineering, Business, or Join the CCP. Its not an A student type of career, more of a B or C student.
It's widely believed in Western society due to the language barrier to access Chinese social media.
But it's not true , or only half true 30 years ago. I personally know 3 or 4 of my alumina abandoned their expertise of Optical Engineering to pursue Lawyer career 20 years ago and made big money.
Another example is one of celebrity law professor (not lawyer though) who recently got involved in a controversy because of Epstein file. He shut down his “weibo" (a Chinese Twitter ) account. He also made tons of money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_Xiang
China moves very fast compare to the western society. Something true today might not be true 3 years later. Let alone half-truth 30 years ago.
And that's exactly what's happening here too, starting with the high-powered law firms who settled with Trump when he sued them instead of fighting. Overnight they ruined their reputation, because who is going to trust them when they folded so easily to government pressure? Moreover, as Trump's will becomes law, literally everything they went to school for becomes moot. All their experience about intellectual property or contract law or whatever is worthless when the law is actually whatever the guy in charge wants on any given day.
That's nonsense. No matter how corrupt the CCP is, it cannot have a stake in all court cases in China. Maybe politically sensitive trials are a farce (arguably that's the case in much of the West too, but that's a different story) but that doesn't make the profession as a whole a joke.
The central government in Bejing doesn't care even a little bit about some property dispute in Henan but there's a local apparatchik who cares or who could be made to care with the right consideration.
This is from my Chinese wife, basically by "joke" I mean its not the top students who are going into it. You don't become rich becoming a lawyer. The top students in Schools join government, become Engineers, do Business, etc.
A lot of what I've seen is that boring small civil and criminal cases (shoplifting) aren't that different in China than they are here.