regard, China's restrictive legal market can be directly tied to a phobia of people asserting their legal rights in the face of rampant corruption. Information received from the State Council Legislative Office suggests that China may be allowing foreigners to sit the Chinese Lawyers Examination, or have a mutual recognition treaty with other countries to allow foreign lawyers to conduct non-litigation Chinese legal work. While China's legal market continues to open up, China's laws and regulations have helped the development of a number of domestic Chinese firms specializing in working with foreigners to meet the demand of a booming economy. According to Asia Law and Business magazine China Awards, the top China firms were King & Wood PRC Lawyers, Commerce & Finance Law Offices, Fangda Partners, Haiwen & Partners, Jun He Law Offices and Lehman, Lee & Xu. In 2005, China started implementing legal reform, which revived the Maoist-era ideals adopted during the 1950s due to the position that the law is cold and unresponsive to the needs of its citizens. This initiative favored mediation over court trials when it came to resolving conflicts among citizens and conflicts between citizens and the state. It also revived judicial populism at the expense of judicial professionalism and was marked by the return of the mass-trial model used during the 1940s. Legal rights The modern idea of legal rights was introduced to China from the West in the 19th century. Its translation as quánlì (权利) was coined by William Alexander Parsons Martin in 1864, in his translation of Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law. Rule of law One of the most commonly used phrases in contemporary China, by legal scholars and politicians alike, is fǎzhì (法治). Fǎzhì can be translated into English as "rule of law", but questions have often been asked whether Chinese leaders meant "rule by law", which means the instrumental use of laws by rulers to facilitate social control and to impose punishment as understood in the Legalist tradition. The related concepts of yīfǎ zhìguó (依法治国: "governing the nation according to the rule of law") and jiànshè shèhuì zhǔyì fǎzhì guójiā (建设社会主义法制国家: "building a socialist rule of law state") have been part of the Chinese Communist Party's official policy since the mid-1990s. In 1999, the NPC adopted an amendment to the Chinese Constitution, incorporating both concepts in Article 5. The existence of the rule of law in China has been