Reviews of Books: The Rise of China and International Law: Taking Chinese Exceptionalism Seriously. By Congyan Cai (original) (raw)
Related papers
China and international law: Two tales of an encounter
Leiden Journal of International Law
This article examines how the encounter between China and international law is narrated in the English-speaking and Chinese literature and sheds light on the politics thereof. It particularly shows that the English-speaking and Chinese-speaking literature diverge as to the order of meaning in which the encounter between China and international law is registered. It demonstrates that the divergences between these bodies of literature are everything but innocent.
Current Chinese approaches to a global history of international law
Storica, 2016
The recent resurgence of global history has also affected international law. One of the objectives of the emerging global history of international law is to broaden its scope in an attempt to overcome Eurocentrism. In this context, China, not only as an emerging global power that can in uence the creation of the normative principles grounding the future world order, but also with its own history of international law, offers a counter-teleology to the classic narrative of progress of international law understood as a scholarly discipline. This article presents a critical overview and analysis of a selection of Chinese scholarly approaches towards the history of international law. Current debates seem to be closely linked to a new conception of modernity that no longer corresponds with the Western conception. The Chinese perspective, in this sense, can contribute to broadening the history of international law, especially when it claims to be global.
China and Comparative International Law: Between Social Science and Critique
Chicago Journal of International Law, 2021
This Essay brings Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg's Lead Essay into conversation with the literature on comparative international law to ask whether the social scientific approach to international law is "international." In particular, this Essay takes the case of scholarship on international law in China to examine why or why not particular methodological and theoretical perspectives on international law may gain traction in certain jurisdictions' legal academies. There are a number of linguistic, pedagogic, institutional, and, ultimately, political reasons why the Chinese scholarship that uses social science to understand international law is still nascent. At the same time, critical approaches to international law in the Chinese literature are ascendant. This Essay explains these divergent trends through a sociology of knowledge lens and offers provisional thoughts about future trajectories for the study of international law in a period during which China's influence on the international system will most likely grow. Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies, Member of the Law Faculty, and Associate Research Fellow of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. The author thanks Liu Yiqiang, Wang Chenguang, and Yang Liu for their help in conducting research for this Essay, and Liu Sida for reading an earlier draft. Chinese names are provided with surname first per Chinese language convention. All errors and all translations are the author's. This work is part of the "China, Law and Development" project, which has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 803763).
Histories of International Law in China. All under Heaven
The global upsurge of interest in historical studies of international law has resulted in a substantial and rapidly expanding body of literature on the history of international law. Notable examples include the "Series in the Theory and History of International Law" by Oxford University Press (OUP) and "Studies in the History of International Law" by Brill. However, much of the work still takes Eurocentric perspectives. While there has been excellent pioneering scholarship on Chinese perspectives of international law, the literature on the history of international law in China remains limited. To achieve a truly "global" history of international law, it is crucial to incorporate China's unique historical, political, and cultural experiences, as well as contributions made by Chinese scholars and practitioners to the development of international law.
The Forms and Architects of China's International Legal Order
Yale Journal of International Law, 2021
Conflict of laws, including choice of law, is conventionally understood as judges or lawyers choosing the governing law in a multijurisdictional matter. In this Article, we turn this notion on its head to ask whether the rules may also choose the legal experts. Drawing on legal anthropology and sociology, we argue that the legal forms of Chinese outbound investment, namely, the heterogeneous nature of contracts and different jurisdictions for Chinese capital, generate a specific ecology of legal expertise. In particular, the legal form is generated by rules from both the home state (i.e., China) and the host states of Chinese capital. While choice of law is often subject to parties' bargaining, and China, as capital-exporter, may occupy a dominant bargaining position vis-à-vis the host state, the territorial sovereignty and mandatory norms of the latter frequently require local law. Consequently, whereas the legal form produces an ecology of legal professionals, including lawyers in Chinese law firms, regional financial centers, U.K. and U.S. law firms, and local firms, it is often the local lawyers who play a pivotal role in generating and sustaining China's cross-border deals. This Article finds that China's "rise" may not reproduce familiar forms of law and globalization-at least not initially. From the perspective of private international law, China itself appears unlikely to overturn the existing international legal order, even if that order is currently undergoing a severe test and China may wish to reform the order to occupy a central role. Rather, our analysis suggests that top-down perspectives on international legal orders must be mirrored and contested by bottom-up ones; such a holistic view spotlights the highly contingent nature of Chinese outbound capital.
Scholarship on Global Constitutionalism is often grounded in a normative monism and in a teleological vision of history that perceives the Chinese approach to the global legal order and its underlying normative assumptions as exceptional. In this paper, I argue that thinking Chinese experience simply in terms of exceptionalism or deviance limits our understanding of the assumptions that underpin some of the theories on the current international legal order as well as the Chinese conception of normativity. In the paper, I first look at the Chinese approach towards the elements that constitute the so-called Trinitarian mantra promoted by Global Constitutionalism (human rights, rule of law, democracy). Next, I examine the limits of adopting the notion of 'exceptionality' in characterizing Chinese international behaviour. In conclusion, I call for a more pluralistic approach.
Chinese Conception of International Law as the Response to the Challenges of Today
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2015
The article analyses different interpretations of the norms and principles of international law by subjects of international law, which represent different cultures, makes it impossible to effectively solve the problems, confronting the world community. The clash of civilizations, which the United Nations is trying to solve through the dialogue of the last decade speaks about different for many cultures perception of human values, which is reflected in approaches to the interpretation of the principles of international law. The authors raise the question about the possibility of perception as ideas of problem solution of other, non-Western, i.e., non-Christian cultures, represented by subjects of international law, occupying more and more leading positions in selected regions. The article analyzes the Chinese concept of international law, the basic principles which are used in other Asian countries (