Abstract: For a long time , it has been widely believed that the main cause of legal reform in the late Qing was the conditional promise made by the Renewed Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Britain and China , which prescribed the abandonment consular jurisdiction.In fact , it was Zhang Zhidong who brought up the abandonment of consular jurisdiction when he was negotiating with Britain in 1902.Zhang initiated the principle of“legal reform to regain consular jurisdiction”in order to advance Western learning in China.But , soon afterwards , Zhang repudiated the principle in order to safeguard his version of legal reform and fight against Shen Jiaben’s legal reform.We can conclude that regaining consular jurisdiction was only one part of late Qing Reform legal reform not the aim.As a part of overall state reform , legal reform was subordinate to the overall reform , it did not have a rationale of its own.