Legal scholars in China generally refrain from criticizing official policies in public. Qin (Sky) Ma writes that scholars’ response to the feared shutdown of the China Judgments Online (中国裁判文书网) at the end of 2023 was a noteworthy deviation from the norm. It showed that the space for critical discourse, though constrained, is not entirely closed and that strategic engagement by scholars can have impact.
China's New Patriotic Education Law Shows the Degradation of Law
China’s newly approved Patriotic Education Law offers a good illustration of what the ruling Communist Party means when it promises to “govern the country according to the law,” writes Ruiping Ye. It means giving policy documents the status of legislation. It is yet another manifestation of the integration of the Party and the state under the current Party leadership.
Picking Quarrels: The One Essential Charge in China
If China’s Criminal Code could contain only one crime, some Chinese judges, lawyers, and legal scholars say that the crime they would keep is “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” or 寻衅滋事. Luo Jiajun writes that it is no exaggeration to say that this charge could be brought against almost anyone living in China today.
New Directions for the Supreme People's Court?
The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act: Investor Protection or Geopolitics?
Tamar Groswald Ozery argues that risks to investors may actually be worsened by US enforcement of the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which was enacted in the name of investor protection. Ozery describes the HFCA as part of a geopolitical agenda of decoupling, but says it is backfiring by enhancing the Chinese government’s control over Chinese issuers.
Of Dialogues and Prisoner Lists
As China prepares to resume bilateral human rights dialogues with Western governments, a human rights advocate reflects on what such dialogues can achieve. Experience tells us that dialogues cannot immediately solve China’s human rights problems, but they can increase transparency — especially about prisoners of conscience.
Is the UN Charter Order Dead After Ukraine?
Moving Beyond Tolerance to Acceptance
February 24: A Clarifying Moment for China’s Foreign Policy
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has abruptly propelled China much further down the path of policy confrontation with the US outside of Asia. Weakening Washington’s global leadership – specifically its sanctioning power and use of alliances to project power around the world – has become a new Chinese core interest.
Rebooting China’s Charity Law
A Reputation Tarnished: Reflections on the Resignation of Overseas Judges from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal
Hong Kong has been privileged to have a panel of eminent overseas judges to serve as non-permanent judges of its Court of Final Appeal (CFA). The willingness of overseas judges to serve on the CFA was seen as a vote of confidence in the constitutional model of “One Country, Two Systems,” in which a common law legal system and its values were to be preserved within a socialist sovereign. Now two UK judges have resigned, expressly citing the National Security Law as the reason.
Exonerating Those They Prosecuted: Prosecutorial Reforms in China, the US, and Taiwan
Traditionally, prosecutors have focused on putting criminals in jail. That narrow focus is now broadening to some extent on both sides of the Pacific as prosecutors in China, Taiwan, and the United States give significant attention to redressing wrongful convictions. The following is a brief comparison of reform efforts in those three jurisdictions.