Longquan judicial archives, the best preserved and the largest number of local judicial archives of the Republic of China, documented the development of Chinese legal system and judicial practice, which provide an excellent material for us to study the judicial practice in the period of the Republic of China. From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, western laws began to be introduced to China. A new elite and professional judicial system was established as constitutional law. Although the constitutional law established the principle for national prosecution to prohibit criminal mediation, and although in 1929 Longquan court had already demonstrated some features of modernization in legislation and staffing, criminal mediation still occupied a fairly large proportion in criminal judicial practice.
Based on the research of Longquan judicial archives, we found that the criminal mediation in the period of the Republic of China can be divided into three modes, i.e. official mediation, civil mediation and governmentapproved civil mediation. Official mediation can be further divided into prosecutor mediation and judge mediation. In the Republic of China, the judges still adhered to the traditional judicial mode. Since their focus was not totally placed on the rights and wrongs of a case but rather on social order, harmony and stability, they would use emotion and law to resolve disputes. The mediators of civil mediation usually involved relatives, friends, tithing men and both parties. This combination accounted for the largest proportion of criminal mediation. The governmentapproved civil mediation was a kind of criminal meditation in which civil power exercised its role as authorized by the lawofficer who finally examined the case．Criminal mediation in the period of the Republic of China mainly concentrated on the phases of public prosecution and trial. Accordingly, the examination and approval of client's application for case withdrawal was subjected to the prosecutor or to the judge according to the phase involved. Due to the different functions and status of the prosecutor and the judge, and their difference in law application and discretion as well, the client's application for withdrawal of criminal meditation met with different endings.
There are three main reasons for the predomination of criminal mediation in the period of the Republic of China. First, judges were in lack of adequate human and material resources, so they preferred to use mediation to resolve criminal disputes in order to reduce the working pressure. Second, for the plaintiff, litigation was a special strategy, the purpose of which was to exert the deterrent effect of the law on the defendant. When the defendant met the request of the plaintiff, they tended to reach a settlement in the litigation. Third, dealing with minor criminal cases had little effect on the promotion of judges. Therefore, judges were willing to end a case through mediation for the sake of their own safety and career since the situation was unrest in the period of the Republic of China.
〖JP〗In short, on the surface, the practice of criminal mediation was rejected by the constitutional law in the period of the Republic of China, but the criminal mediation as a ″hidden rule″ survived tenaciously. This shows that the effect of law implementation in the period of the Republic of China was not that satisfactory despite the great achievements in legislation. Our country's legal construction is again in a transformation period. We must draw lessons from the legislation of the Republic of China. In the new era, we must put more emphasis on the investigation of our local traditions and practices, pay more attention to the integration of local resources and external system, insist on the autonomy of legal developments, and construct China's own criminal procedure system.