Decoding China's Foreign-Related Rule of Law

Friday-Saturday, November 21-22, 2025

9:00 am-4:30 pm

Vanderbilt Hall 216

This event is in-person only.

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The workshop is co-hosted by Professor Maria Adele Carrai of NYU Shanghai and Mapping Global China.

About the event:

“Foreign-related rule of law” (FRROL) is one of the Chinese leadership’s pithy phrases for a big governance idea. Like the more famous Global Security Initiative and Global Development Initiative, FRROL is not a single project or program but a policy signal. It is shorthand for the leadership’s ambition to reexamine and update the rules and processes that undergird China’s legal relationships with foreign actors in both the private and public spheres, and build its capacities to manage those relationships in the national interest. It is sweeping, ambitious, vague, and potentially impactful, depending on how the Chinese legal community – and perhaps the world – responds to the call. Hundreds of academic articles citing FRROL have been published in Chinese but relatively few in English.   

In April 2025, Professor Maria Adele Carrai held an initial workshop at NYU Shanghai at which Chinese and international scholars shared their research about how the FRROL initiative is playing out in specific areas of law, from trade and tariffs to international arbitration to repatriation of cultural artifacts. Participants also assessed China’s legal influence globally.  

Picking up where the April workshop left off, during Nov. 21-22 we will hear presentations from two dozen scholars from around the world, including China, as we continue to decode the meaning of FRROL, its impact so far, and the prospects for future impact on international legal norms and practices.

Agenda (to come)