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.

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. 

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"…

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.

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.

The UN Security Council is again deadlocked, this time over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Professor Bing Bing Jia, one of China’s leading international law scholars, argues that the United Nations remains irreplaceable as a forum for diplomacy and for breaking political stalemates through application of international law. 

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.

COVID restrictions combined with a deterioration in China’s relations with the West have made scholarly contact between China and Western scholars far more difficult than in the past. What strategies can we use to study recent developments in China that are no longer easily accessible?

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?

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.

Yuki Tatsumi, director of the Japan Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., and a leading expert on Japan’s security policy, will discuss how recent events are affecting the process of revising Japan’s National Security Strategy and the likely direction of its new security policy.

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.

China’s bid to join the CPTPP megatrade agreement presents a challenge for Japan in its new leadership role as the regional flag bearer for free trade.

In his forthcoming book Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo, Dr. Michael Green argues that no other country has devised a grand strategy for managing China’s rising economic and military power as deliberately or successfully as Japan. Green

Twenty years after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the US and other member states are questioning China’s commitment to the institution and to the multilateral liberal trading order.

China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) two decades ago was hailed in many Western circles as a significant achievement for international law and the rule of law. Fast forward to the present, we find the WTO and multilateral trade system in crisis…

Following China’s recent barrage of incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, experts and officials on both sides of the Pacific are analyzing the risk of military conflict and options for keeping peace in the Taiwan Strait at a time of significant pressure on US-China.

No one can quite agree on how best to describe the relationship between the world’s two superpowers, the US and China. Where some see a competition, others see a renewed form of Cold War.

Guest speaker Jonathan Odom will join NYU Law School Adjunct Professor Peter Dutton to discuss the fast-moving events in the South China Sea and maritime East Asia. They will discuss the conflicting claims to water space, resources, and islands and ask whether international law can be invoked to reduce tensions.

Carole J. Petersen is professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii at Manoa.