After World War II ended in the Pacific, the United States redrew the map of East Asia. Among other things, it decided the disposition of various island groups that Japan had controlled, some of which were also claimed by China, Russia, or Korea. Decades later, these islands – the Senkakus/Diaoyutai, Takeshima/Dokdo, the Northern Territories/Kurils, and a few others – remain the subject of contestation between Japan and its neighbors, the focus of irredentist claims on all sides that periodically flare up and threaten the peace. Alexis Dudden, professor of history at the University of Connecticut, will discuss why the island disputes remain so intractable, the role initially played by the San Francisco Treaty, now further complicated by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the ongoing threat to regional peace.
Over the summer, we added two new cases to our archive: the Liu Zhonglin Murder Case and the Xie Zhehai Murder Case. Both convictions relied heavily on contested confessions with little to no corroborating evidence; both defendants maintained their innocence and pursued relief for many years; and both spent more than two decades in prison before their convictions were overturned due to insufficient evidence. Both cases also occurred in rural areas at a time when rural police had very low investigatory capacities and DNA testing was not yet available. Check out the new additions and browse other entries in the first English-language archive of Chinese wrongful convictions.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP or Party) General Secretary Xi Jinping first mentioned FRROL in an internal Party meeting in 2019 in the context of discussing law’s role in economic development. Over the past five years alone, Chinese scholars have produced more than 2,000 articles on various aspects of FRROL, yet English-language treatment remains sparse and fragmented. To assess how this agenda is taking shape across legal domains, the U.S.–Asia Law Institute (USALI) at NYU School of Law and NYU Shanghai Professor Marie Adele Carrai convened the “Decoding China’s Foreign-Related Rule of Law” workshop on November 21–22, 2025. The gathering followed an initial workshop on FRROL at NYU Shanghai in April 2025.
The deep partisan divisions rending Taiwan's government are no secret. Legislative push-back to President Lai Ching-te’s budgets has received international attention. Yinn-Ching Lu writes that much less attention has been paid both abroad and within Taiwan to a different manifestation of the power struggle between the branches: near-paralysis of the government appointment process. Critical institutions’ leadership ranks are being decapitated by the legislature’s refusal to approve presidential nominees, a phenomenon that Lu says may ultimately be more damaging to Taiwan’s democracy.
The chairwoman of Taiwan’s Nationalist (Kuomintang) Party, Cheng Li-wun, has a message for Americans: Taiwan should not be the next Ukraine. Rather, Taiwan should reconcile with China and seek to carve out some kind of autonomy within “the great Chinese nation.” Katherine Wilhelm writes that most of Taiwan’s 23 million people do not identify as Chinese, but they are deeply divided over whether the best way to preserve their way of life is befriending China or arming against China.
Few people outside of China’s legal elites have heard of the “foreign-related rule of law” policy. Yet this awkwardly named policy was a big reason that Chinese President Xi Jinping was able to stage his recent summit with US President Donald Trump in a posture of apparent parity. Katherine Wilhelm writes that “foreign-related rule of law” produced the critical minerals export control regime that enabled Xi to force Trump into a tariff truce.
August 16 – August 22
A Chinese court sentences the founder and former chairman of real estate developer Evergrande to life in prison for fraud on a massive scale; a Hong Kong court convicts two NGO leaders of incitement to subversion for peacefully calling for an end to one-party rule in China; Japan’s Foreign Ministry says the the US decision to impose sanctions against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane, a Japanese citizen, is “very unfortunate”; South Korean Justice Minister Jeong Seong-ho resigns and says he wants to return to the National Assembly and roll back prosecutor system reforms; prosecutors in Taiwan indict four companies and fifteen individuals in connection with the recent widespread sale of contaminated soybean-based cooking oil.
August 09 – August 15
China's Supreme People’s Court issues its first judicial interpretation of the Ecological Environment Code that takes effect this week; Hong Kong's Court of Appeal allows eleven jailed pro-democracy figures to appeal their national security convictions to the city's top court; Japan revises its seed law to halt unauthorized exports of prized crop varieties; South Korea’s election commission rejects all opposition petitions seeking to overturn the results of June local elections; Taiwan's opposition-controlled legislature passes the central government budget after a record 350-day delay, including controversial funding to develop a domestic defense drone industry; Taiwan's Constitutional Court, reduced to five participating justices by the legislature's blockade of judicial nominees, strikes down rules that had barred prosecutions for child sexual abuse.
August 02 – August 08
China increases protection for domestic semiconductor chip layout designs and imposes retaliatory controls on drone exports to the United States; Hong Kong authorities consider adding facial recognition to drones it now uses to enforce safety rules at construction sites; the Japanese Defense Ministry’s annual white paper calls for preparedness as China and North Korea increase their military capabilities; South Korea promulgates a sweeping revision of the Criminal Procedure Act that strips prosecutors of all investigative powers, capping a years-long effort to rein them in; Taiwan's legislature bars persons convicted of large-scale fraud from running for president or vice president.
Program on International Law & Relations in Asia
Dr. Paul Sheard will join Professor Bruce Aronson for a discussion about Japan’s economic growth strategy and corporate governance, with a particular focus on the Takaichi Cabinet’s growth agenda, sometimes called “Sanaenomics,” and how it compares with “Abenomics.” They will also discuss how Japan’s broader strategic priorities are evolving in response to shifting domestic and global economic conditions.