| Summary: | French civil law played an important role in China’s pursuit of modernity, primarily because many key actors were educated in French law schools and their projects of modernization were inspired by judicial practice or doctrine in the hexagon. This article offers a survey on the writings of four of these actors, namely Ma Jianzhong, Georges Padoux, Jean Escarra, and Wang Boqi, and discuss how they understood Chinese modernization through the lens of French law. Though all of them shared the idea that a well-designed civil code can serve the political purpose of creating a powerful modern state, their notions on the relation between modern law and traditional society distinguishes from each other. This finding shows that the formulation and elaboration of a modernizing project are contingent determined by the given historical contexts.
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