According to Xinhua News Agency, on September 13, President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China signed a presidential decree, following the decision passed during the 11th Session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress earlier that day. The decree, issued to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, honored 15 individuals with national medals and honorary titles. Among them, Professor Zhang Jinfan, Professor Emeritus at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), was awarded the prestigious title of “People’s Educator”.
Zhang Jinfan, a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), born in July 1930, is a male ethnic Han from Longkou of Shandong Province. He is the former Vice President of CUPL, former Honorary Dean of the Institute for Legal History Studies of CUPL, as well as a Professor Emeritus and doctoral supervisor of CUPL. As a renowned jurist, legal educator and a chief architect of China's legal history studies in China, Prof. Zhang helped establish the status of legal history as a national key discipline. His groundbreaking research has established the theoretical foundations and structural paradigms for this field of study in China. Throughout his career, Prof. Zhang has been deeply committed to the CPC’s educational mission. He was among the first cohort of doctoral supervisors in law in the early years of the People’s Republic of China and has since mentored more than one hundred doctoral students, leaving a lasting legacy in the field of legal education in China.
