We find ourselves at a remarkable moment in global environmental governance. China actively supports green development on the global stage, while the US under the Trump administration rejects the Paris Agreement and actively opposes the development of renewable energy and electric vehicles. Professor Alex Wang of the UCLA School of Law will introduce his new book, Chinese Global Environmentalism, which examines how China came to embrace green development and how it promotes a developmental form of environmentalism that differs from Western conceptions.

The Trump administration’s efforts to secure more control over Greenland have put China’s activities in the Arctic under a spotlight. Since 2018 when China declared itself to be a “near-Arctic state” with strategic interests in the region, it has expanded its Arctic research activities, acquired more icebreaking vessels, conducted Arctic patrols with Russia, and sent a ship from Asia to Europe through the Arctic Ocean along Russia’s northern coast – a route China has dubbed the “Polar Silk Road.” But is any of this activity contrary to international law or dangerous to the US? Professor Yuanyuan (Kate) Ren at the University of Dayton School of Law, an international law scholar who formerly worked at the Polar Research Institute of China, will explain how China interprets international law at the polar regions and what is publicly known about its Arctic goals.  

As political and economic trust between the United States and China deteriorates year by year, some non-profits and scholars in both countries continue to swim against the tide, organizing exchange programs designed to build mutual understanding and trust. One of these is the U.S.-China Education Trust (USCET), a non-profit founded by former US Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch that supports American studies and other education programs at Chinese universities. Last May, when the US State Department announced that it would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” USCET issued a public statement decrying what it called a threat to the “broader foundation of US-Chinese relations.” Ambassador Bloch and USCET Executive Director Rosie Levine will explain why they continue to believe in the value of bilateral education exchanges, drawing on USCET’s more than two decades of experience.

intensifying rivalry between the United States and China is reshaping the international order. The transactional diplomacy of the Trump administration is accelerating the erosion of established institutional guardrails. In this challenging moment, University of Tokyo Professor Ryo Sahashi says that Japan is working to reinforce global stability. Through careful management of its alliance with the US, proactive engagement with European and Indo-Pacific partners, and cooperation with Global South nations, Japan is trying to maintain regional balances, prevent conflict escalation, and preserve economic networks and free trade. Professor Sahashi will share his policy recommendations for how Japan and like-minded nations can collaboratively navigate the shifting global landscape.

Since the Chinese government carried out full-scale privatization of the urban housing market nearly three decades ago, private home ownership in cities has soared and tens of millions of home-owning Chinese have joined home ownership associations. In his new book, The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Shitong Qiao argues that homeowner associations (HOAs) have fundamentally changed how Chinese urban neighborhoods and cities are governed. Drawing on six years of fieldwork, he finds that local governments have come to rely on homeowners to help govern their own neighborhoods, and homeowners have become accustomed to the democratic ritual of electing HOA leaders. Does the rise of HOAs have any wider significance for China’s political future?

China’s legal service sector is growing rapidly, including not only commercial law offices but publicly funded legal aid and innovative free legal advice platforms. At the same time, the regime has largely suppressed the country’s human rights lawyers. What is going on? Hualing Fu, dean of the law faculty at the University of Hong Kong and visiting professor at NYU School of Law, will share his research into an emerging new sector that he calls “public legal services,” which the party-state is developing in order to ensure that social disputes are resolved speedily in line with regime interests. In the process, Chinese lawyers may be transitioning backward from legal professionals to state legal workers.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought a massive acceleration of the trade war with China that he began during his first term and that President Biden deepened. So far, Trump’s focus has been on tariffs, not exclusive to China. Biden introduced a complex array of US export, import, investment, and sanctions regimes more narrowly targeting China, each with distinct but overlapping rules. The resulting trade regime is difficult for American companies to follow and also increasingly relies upon cooperation and enforcement by other countries. Transshipment restrictions have become an onerous element of both US and Chinese measures. Particularly affected are East Asian countries that are usually regarded as US partners but rely on trade with both superpowers. Christina Davis, a professor of Japanese politics at Harvard University and director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, and Pasha Hsieh, professor of law at Singapore Management University, will discuss the economic and political impact that US-Chinese rivalry is having on these countries, how much agency they have to comply or abstain from the superpower struggle, the impact on regional trade patterns, and whether these smaller countries may help lead the way back to a more unified rules-based trade order.

Private law scholars have viewed Anglo-American common law as the core infrastructure of modern capitalism the world over. But what happens when rising powers like China with very different legal and political systems begin investing abroad on a vast scale? Our speaker, Matthew Erie, associate professor at the University of Oxfordr esponded to this question by launching a six-year project, called China, Law, and Development, and inviting scholars around the world to participate in gathering empirical evidence about the legal underpinnings of China’s worldwide investments, and whether or how China has disrupted prior assumptions about the relationship between law and development. In this talk, he will introduce the concept of “law as infrastructure” to make sense of the strategies and challenges of the People’s Republic of China. Rather than a “clash of civilizations” or a world remade in China’s image, law as infrastructure points to a process of layering, assembling, and bundling different laws and legal regimes including new law that is integrated within existing frameworks, epistemic communities, and institutions, as well as the creation of new infrastructures in emerging sectors such as renewable energy.

China’s success in cultivating Big Tech firms has enabled it to emerge as a formidable rival to the United States in the digital sphere. But in the past few years, the Chinese government has embarked on a massive regulatory crackdown, targeting its largest tech corporations such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Meituan. Many Western experts have viewed this tech crackdown as an assault on private businesses, causing doubt among investors about whether Chinese firms are still investable. Professor Angela Zhang will go beyond the headlines to unravel the dynamic complexity of China’s regulatory governance. Drawing insights from her newly published book, High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, she will introduce the dynamic pyramid model of regulation, an analytical framework that demystifies Chinese regulatory governance. She will examine the impact of the tech crackdown on the administrative state, the competitive landscape, and global tech rivalry. And she will peer into the future by examining China’s strategy for regulating generative artificial intelligence. 

An obscure reef in the South China Sea has become the latest flashpoint in China’s long-running campaign to dominate the South China Sea. Since last summer, the Chinese Coast Guard has repeatedly employed water cannons, lasers, and acoustic weapons and rammed Philippine Navy and Coast Guard vessels to prevent them from resupplying military personnel positioned at Second Thomas Shoal. Jay Batongbacal, a lawyer and professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, will discuss how this tiny maritime feature became a potential conflict site, why a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal in the Philippines’ favor has not ended the dispute, and how international law can continue to be effective in the face of Chinese attacks.

China has rapidly emerged as a global leader in artificial intelligence, closely rivalling the United States. China is also at the forefront of regulating AI. It has proactively introduced some of the world’s earliest and most comprehensive rules concerning algorithms, deepfakes, and chatbots, among others. Angela Zhang, global professor of law at NYU School of Law, will take a dive deep into China’s regulatory landscape and provide a critical assessment of its AI governance strategies. She will also forecast the future direction of China’s AI regulation and explore its potential implications on the global community. Professor Benedict Kingsbury of NYU School of Law will moderate.

China’s dramatic economic growth over the past four decades has challenged conventional assumptions about the relationship between legal systems and economic development. While China has invested heavily in building its legal system, the role of formal law in governing Chinese markets is clearly different from its role in Western democracies. Tamar Groswald Ozery, who studies the intersection of Chinese law and political economy, will talk about the ways that law has been used in China since 2010 to reconfigure market governance to handle the consequences of prior decades of state capitalism. This reconfiguration is achieved through the mobilization of legal institutions in two directions: intensifying the presence of the regulatory state in the market, and shifting substantial market governance powers directly to the Communist Party. The talk is based on Ozery’s new book, Law & Political Economy in China: The Role of Law in Corporate Governance & Market Growth (Cambridge University Press). The book analyzes market development in China from 1978-2021, and concludes that law serves as an internal party-state instrument for allocating political-economic power.

Conflicts over specific rules lie at the heart of the narrative of China's island disputes with its neighbors in the East and South China Seas. But the main contest concerns the strategic waters associated with those islands. o consolidate control over this vital maritime space, China's leaders have begun to enforce "China's Law of the Sea"…

Earlier this year, China’s Communist Party orchestrated yet another reorganization of party and state organs, resulting in some party and government entities being merged (合并) or joined  (合署). The move follows an even more extensive institutional shakeup in 2018. Meanwhile, the party under Xi Jingping’s leadership continues to encroach on government functions in more subtle ways as well.

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has recently started highlighting the importance of promoting “foreign-related rule of law,” a new category of law that knits together Chinese and international law to govern China’s offshore activities. One place to look for foreign-related rule of law in action is in Chinese-invested overseas special economic zones, which some foreign scholars view as extraterritorial zones under Chinese power and law.

China now boasts the world’s largest distant water fishing fleet, the third largest commercial shipping fleet by deadweight tonnage, advanced technology for exploring the deep sea, and its own global satellite system. It is about to complete its fifth research station in Antarctica. All this makes China a major actor in determining the future of the high seas – waters outside of national jurisdiction.

Mike Chinoy, a former CNN Beijing bureau chief, will talk about his new book, Assignment China, an oral history of American journalists who reported on China from the Communist revolution of 1949 through the COVID-19 pandemic.

China’s staggering economic development over the past four decades owes much to the effectiveness of its tax system. Wei Cui, a professor of law and tax expert at the University of British Columbia, will share highlights from his 2022 book The Administrative Foundations of the Chinese Fiscal State, in which he introduces the politics, policies, and practices of tax collection in China.

Can a sophisticated financial market exist without legal protections for investors and creditors? International investors have put trillions of dollars into “China concepts stocks” and Chinese-issued international bonds over the past two decades, even though these markets to some extent operate extra-legally.

As China slowly emerges from its self-imposed COVID-19 isolation and entry becomes easier for foreign businessmen, a critical question that has been pushed to the side will return to the fore: is European business still in love with China?

Stimulating private entrepreneurship has been a purportedly vital item on the Chinese government’s recent policy agenda, though perhaps few have given it credence. Arguably the most significant legislative implementation of this policy was the 2013 amendment of the Company Law, which reformed long-standing “registered capital” rules.

How is China regulating data, blockchain, and the emerging Web3? China’s regulatory approach is based on “cyber sovereignty.” The government actively promotes blockchain technology and has advanced plans for a sovereign digital currency, while also strictly prohibiting crypto mining and trading.

China’s Direction under Xi Jinping: What We Learned from the Party Congress

At a time when the capacity for effective UN Security Council responses, even in response to aggression, seems stymied, how should we understand the posture of China and India in response to Ukraine and other formidable global challenges, including climate change?

Divorce rates in China have risen sharply over the past three decades, as socioeconomic transformations have reshaped family life and gender relationships. Assistant Professor Ke Li of John Jay College of the City University of New York will discuss her book Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China.

Building on his research into neighborhood governance in urban China, Professor Shitong Qiao will discuss grassroots governance during the Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown, including the emergence of spontaneous cooperation among residents at the neighborhood level and the regulation and self-regulation of resident groups.

The 2015 revision of China’s Administrative Litigation Law caused an explosive increase in courts’ workload, including a surge in Chinese citizens suing local governments over property expropriation. Professor Shitong Qiao of the Duke School of Law and and Professor Chaoqun Zhan of Sun Yat-sen University, will share their research into how that surge affected court decisions.

Many debates exist about the nature of China’s engagement with the international “rule-based” order and whether the arrangements underpinning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be formalized into hard laws. Our speakers will demonstrate how China’s provincial governments re-interpret the BRI to generate a new international economic agenda largely driven by regional interests.

China’s new Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) has grabbed international attention largely because it imposes costs on foreign companies with Chinese customers and pushes us even further in the direction of data localization.