This insightful book investigates the historical, political, and legal foundations of the Chinese perspectives on the rule of law and the international rule of law. Building upon an understanding of the rule of law as an 'essentially contested concept', this book analyses the interactions between the development of the rule of law within China and the Chinese contribution to the international rule of law, more particularly in the areas of global trade and security governance.

This book analyzes China’s attitude to international law based on historical experiences and documents, and provides an explanation of China’s approaches to international legal issues. It also establishes several elements for a possible framework of Chinese theory on international law. The book offers researchers, university students and practitioners valuable insights into how China views international law and why it does so in the way it does.

The rise of China signals a new chapter in international relations. How China interacts with the international legal order--namely, how China utilizes international law to facilitate and justify its rise and how international law is relied upon to engage a rising China--has invited growing debate among academics and those in policy circles. Two recent events, the South China Sea Arbitration and the US-China trade war, have deepened tensions. This book, for the first time, provides a systematic and critical elaboration of the interplay between a rising China and international law. Several crucial questions are broached. These include: How has China adjusted its international legal policies as China's state identity changes over time, especially as it becomes a formidable power? Which methodologies has China adopted to comply with international law and, in particular, to achieve its new legal strategy of norm entrepreneurship? How does China organize its domestic institutions to engage international law in order to further its ascendance? How does China use international law at a national level (in the Chinese courts) and at an international level (for example, lawfare in international dispute settlement)? And finally, how should "Chinese exceptionalism" be understood? This book contributes significantly to the burgeoning and highly relevant scholarship on China and international law.

This edited volume aims at examining China's role in the field of international governance and the rule of law under the Belt and Road Initiative from a holistic manner. It seeks alternative analytical frameworks that not only take into account legal ideologies and legal ideals, but also local demand and socio-political circumstances, to explain and understand China's legal interactions with countries along the Road, so that more useful insights can be produced in predicting and analysing China's as well as other emerging Asian countries' legal future. Authors from Germany, Korea, Singapore, Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have contributed to this edited volume, which produces academic dialogues and conducts intellectual exchanges in specific sub-themes.

This volume challenges the conventional wisdom about judicial independence in China and its relationship to economic growth, rule of law, human rights protection, and democracy. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach that places China's judicial reforms and the struggle to enhance the professionalism, authority, and independence of the judiciary within a broader comparative and developmental framework. Contributors debate the merits of international best practices and their applicability to China; provide new theoretical perspectives and empirical studies; and discuss civil, criminal, and administrative cases in urban and rural courts. This volume contributes to several fields, including law and development and the promotion of rule of law and good governance, globalization studies, neo-institutionalism and studies of the judiciary, the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes, Asian legal studies, and comparative law more generally.

The Chinese Perspectives on Human Rights and Good Governance series reviews various aspects of human rights and good governance in China, including international human rights standards, specific substantive rights protection and rule of law, as well as constitutionalism, especially in the context of contemporary China. Its aim is to stimulate discussion on these and related topics, with a focus on international standards whenever these are applicable and relevant to China. In this first volume in the series, the contributors adopt different disciplinary approaches to look at China both in the context of its internal constraints and as a global player in the overall development of human rights. Where is China headed in the near future? Does Chinese culture stand in contradiction to human rights? Is the rule of law alien to Chinese society? Can China move ahead without political reforms? In this thought-provoking volume, leading Chinese and Western scholars offer analysis of these issues, also with reference to Chinese history and contemporary culture.

Rule of law, one of the pillars of the modern world, has emerged in Western liberal democracies. This book considers how rule of law is viewed and implemented in the different cultural, economic and political context of Asia.

This book discusses selected frontier and hot theoretical and practical issues of international law in the 21st century and in the process of China's peaceful development strategy, such as interactions between harmonious world, international law and China s peaceful development; close connections of China rule of law with international rule of law; issues of international law resulted from the war of Former Yugoslavia, establishment of ICC, DPRK nuclear test, Iraq War, Independence of Crimea; features of WTO rule of law and its challenges as well as legal and practical disputes between China and other members in the WTO; recent tendency of regional trade agreements and characteristics of Chinese practices in this aspect; legal issues in relations between China and the European Union with a view of the framework of China–EU Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

The search for universal principles and laws in world politics is a colossal common task for all civilisations. It should not be monopolised by the Western liberal paradigm. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, global conflicts have been satisfactorily resolved neither by communism nor liberalism. Humanitarian intervention, now under the cover of the responsibility to protect (R2P), has destabilised many societies, leaving justice undone. This inspiring book invites debates on the post-liberal imagination of 'emancipated Leviathan': an almighty political authority which exercises awe and force to restore order, as well as enshrines globally-negotiated values of common conscience and reinvented cosmopolitanism. Human well-being will truly become reality when we synergise pre-modern and pre-liberal ways of thinking, worldviews, ethics, and aesthetic styles by means of cross-civilisational, cross-disciplinary fundamental research, and let an emancipated Leviathan exercises principles and laws of virtue derived from the study.The starting point of such intellectual innovation is China. This book explores the application of classical Chinese resources to the innovation of thoughts in contemporary Chinese international relations (IR). It examines whether 'Knowledge Archaeology of Chinese International Relations' (KACIR), coined by the author, responds sensibly to today's issues of international ethics and global justice. The book contends that emancipative hermeneutics holds the key to the Chinese soft power puzzle. A bottom-up, non-nationalistic, and non-ethnocentric approach to the Chinese civilisation will reinvent intellectual pluralism and cosmopolitan elements in the Chinese tradition that interact constructively with and ultimately transcend the liberal Western model. Strolling from contemporary IR back to ancient Chinese philosophy, then striding into the future searching for common principles and laws, this insightful book is a must-read for those who want to reflect on global conflicts in this era of great uncertainty and transformation, as well as those who love to make our world a better place to live in.

How can one of the world's most free-wheeling cities transition from a vibrant global center of culture and finance into a subject of authoritarian control?As Beijing's anxious interference has grown, the "one country, two systems" model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the yearssince the 1997 handover. As "one country" seemed set to gobble up "two systems," the people of Hong Kong riveted the world's attention in 2019 by defiantly demanding the autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms they were promised. In 2020, the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing aimed to snuff out such resistance. Will the Hong Kong so deeply held in the people's identity and the world's imagination be lost? Professor Michael Davis, who has taught human rights and constitutional law in this city for over three decades, and has been one of its closest observers, takes us on this constitutional journey.