Recorded on October 21, 2020.
The Rise of China and International Law
About the Event:
One of China’s leading scholars writing about international law from a Chinese perspective, Professor Cai Congyan, will talk about the ways in which an increasingly wealthy and powerful China has evolved from “selective adaptation” of existing international legal norms to “norm entrepreneurship.” Even as China defends its record of compliance with existing international rules, it uses both direct (promoting its own broad principles) and indirect (legislating in new areas such as cyberspace to set benchmarks for state practice) methods to introduce its legal and governance norms into the international legal regime.
About the Speaker:
Cai Congyan is professor of international law at Fudan University School of Law based in Shanghai, China. Before joining Fudan Law School in 2020, he taught at Xiamen University School of Law for 15 years. Professor Cai’s academic interests include international legal theory, foreign relations law, international investment law, and Chinese international legal policies and practice. His book The Rise of China and International Law was published last year. He is co-editor of The Contribution of the UN Security Council to the Law of Peace and War (forthcoming) and The BRICS in the New International Legal Order on Investment: Reformers or Disruptors, which was published this year. He has published many journal articles with the American Journal of International Law, European Journal of International Law, Journal of International Economic Law, Chinese Journal of International Law, Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, and others, as well as chapters in many English-language books. Professor Cai was a Fulbright scholar and global research fellow at the New York University School of Law (2011-2012), a visiting professor at Columbia Law School (2014), and a senior fellow with the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe Research Group “The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?” based at Humboldt University School of Law (2016). He has been a visiting professor at Kobe University School of Law.