March 27-April 2

China

At least five Chinese scholars were prevented from attending a virtual international conference held by the US-based Association for Asian Studies, one of the largest membership-based organization in the field. According to NPR, police visited the home of one scholar who had presented a research paper to an Zoom panel earlier in the week and questioned the scholar for hours. Chinese education authorities have required academics to obtain approval for overseas travel and collaborations since 2016, and the approval requirement was extended to online conferences in 2020. The NPR report suggested that enforcement of the rules has tightened.
The National People’s Congress Standing Committee is expected to review these laws at its April meeting. The Council of Chairpersons has not yet announced the date for the session.

Two senior British judges have resigned from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, the special administrative region’s highest court, expressing concern about erosion of political freedom. This leaves ten non-permanent foreign judges from the UK, Canada, and Australia on the court. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss endorsed the resignations. Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the decision meant the UK government was effectively ending an agreement that has been in place since 1997. The Chinese government said it “strongly deplored” the judges’ decision to quit the court.

The revised Juvenile Law, which lowers the age of adulthood from 20 to 18, came into effect on April 1. The change may cause some young offenders to face more serious punishment. The age change was made to keep in step with the Civil Code, revised in 2020, which changed the age of majority from 20 to 18 for for matters such as entering into contracts.

In a 5-4 decision, South Korea’s Constitutional Court dismissed a petition filed by a group of tattoo artists seeking to be allowed to provide tattoos without a medical license. South Korea is the only developed country in the world that prohibits non-medical professionals from tattooing people, as its neighbor Japan moved to lift the medical license requirement for tattoo artists in September 2020. Some tattoo artists in South Korea have been protesting against the medical license requirement for years.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) nominated Hsing Tai-Chao (邢泰釗), the chief prosecutor of Taiwan’s High Prosecutors Office, to be the next prosecutor general. The nomination has to be confirmed by the Legislative Yuan.
Taiwan’s Supreme Court decided not to vote on the question of whether allowing a judge to preside over a remanded case that he or she originally decided violates the principle of a fair trial. Thirty-eight death-row inmates petitioned the Supreme Court to review the remand policy, arguing that judges who originally presided over remanded cases should recuse themselves the second time around. However, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition, stating that the Judicial Yuan decided the matter for the purpose of judicial efficiency in 1987.