Chapter 7 examines the development of legal education and legal theory in Egypt and China in the early twentieth century. It does so in order to show that India and Mandatory Palestine were not isolated cases. Rather, they were part of a wider jurisprudential wave that appeared simultaneously in the first half of the twentieth century in many non-Western territories. In Egypt, modern legal education had strong French roots, with Cairo University’s law faculty serving as its major hub. Egyptian jurists blended Western jurisprudential theories (particularly French sociological and anti-formalist thought) with Islamic legal traditions, portraying Islamic law as dynamic, democratic, and compatible with liberal and socialist ideals. In China, the creation of a modern legal education system led to the establishment of institutions such as Soochow University’s Comparative Law School, which promoted a curriculum based on comparative law and sociological jurisprudence. The chapter concludes with a discussion of mutual influence between the different places examined, arguing that similarities were not due to direct influence but to shared intellectual environments shaped by anti-colonial nationalism.

How does law travel in Inter-Asia? This chapter focuses on traveling law as an empirical event and does so to reflect on prevailing theories in comparative law that explain how law moves from one jurisdiction to another. The dominant paradigm in comparative law for traveling law is legal transplants, a concept that has generated a sprawling literature. The point of this chapter is not to say that Inter-Asia is aberrational regarding legal transplants; instead, the perspective is to use the Inter-Asian Law material, and specifically the fraught movements of Chinese law in Inter-Asia, to critically reflect on comparative law conventions. Whereas Inter-Asia is embedded within global trade and migration routes, it has also been populated by outsiders – pirates or jihadis – whose participation within those circuits creates contrast and distance, elements that are prerequisites to critical reflection. Chinese law may also be such an outsider that permits reflecting on taken-for-granted paths.

This concluding chapter outlines the contours of the Party-state and develops a conceptual framework to explain its distinctive mode of governance. At its core is a dual normative system: a legal system grounded in popular sovereignty is overseen and constrained by a power-based normative system designed to uphold the absolute authority of the Party Center—an organizing principle essential to maintaining the structural integrity of the Party-state. The chapter argues that the governance logic of the Party-state is best captured by the theory of Normalized Political Prerogative (NPP). According to this theory, governance unfolds through a three-step process: operationalization, normalization, and regulation. Together, these constitute the formal institutional foundation of Party-state rule. The NPP framework elucidates the systemic proliferation of corruption as an inherent byproduct of this mode of governance, the role of the Party’s disciplinary apparatus as a self-correcting mechanism to mitigate its adverse effects, and the evolving dynamics between institutions and leadership that shape politicking and power struggles within the Politburo.

This chapter will focus on how Chinese and Japanese copyright law balance content owner’s desire for copyright protection with the national policy goal of enabling and promoting technological advancement, in particular in the area of AI-related progress. In discussing this emerging area of law, we will focus mainly on the two most fundamental questions that the widespread adoption of generative AI pose to copyright regulators: (1) does the use and refinement of training data violate copyright law, and (2) who owns a copyright in content produced by or with the help of AI?

Part II establishes the alternative law and political economy framework by unpacking the dynamics between politics and law in the process of China’s market reforms. It starts with describing the relationship between law and politics in constructing one of the primary mechanisms of macro control in China – China’s socio-economic development blueprint, the “Five-Year Plan.”

It then moves to a chapter-by-chapter analysis of the evolving roles of law during China’s market reforms, outlining a three-stage shift in the allocation of market governance authorities within the Party-state system through legal evidence.

Throughout this part of the book, the author examines the legal configurations of political-power dynamics through a systematic investigation of the vast body of market-related primary and secondary sources of law and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents that have been promulgated in China since the early reforms until the present day. This Part reflects how two functions of law – economic and political – have developed side by side, each supporting the other.

Chapter 2 explains that the traditional framework through which economic development is analyzed creates a puzzle when applied to the Chinese market. Regarding clearly defined, strong, and predictable rights and reliable legal institutions as preconditions for financial market development does not align with the ways in which China’s financial market evolved. The chapter highlights the resulting marginalizing view of the role of law in China. It ponders the dissonance that was created between the common devaluing of Chinese law and the Party-state’s sophisticated use of law to govern markets. To resolve this dissonance, the chapter offers law & political economy as an alternative analytical framework through which to address China’s market development puzzle and the role of law within it.

The chapter also provides notes on methodology, including data collection and methods of analysis, as well as important caveats about the study.

This chapter proposes a theory of legal instrumentalism – contextually, a more explanatory framework than either Marxist or Confucian legal theories – to explain the function and role of law in Chinese society. This kind of instrumentalism, which differs from the debate over this theory in the Anglo-American tradition, is situated in China’s authoritarian regime, where a primary concern is the maintenance of political stability through strengthening authoritarian legality for the ruler. On this premise, economic development, as well as other social goals – such as efficiency of the government – for which the law can undoubtedly be placed in an instrumental position may become a priority in the ruler’s political agenda. When it comes to dispute resolution, the primary matter of concern is not the achievement of the formalist justice of Western tradition via either a formal or informal process but rather the settlement of disputes for which the law primarily plays a facilitative role as a tool, regardless of what strategies it may use. Instrumentalism of this kind, which is suitable for Chinese society both culturally and historically, shows that law is visible and does matter in China, although it cannot be completely understood through the lens of other legal traditions.

This chapter discusses the background, thesis, significance and implications of researching the theme of the sources of Chinese law in both comparative and Chinese legal scholarship. It also identifies the significant components of positive law in China’s legislative system and provides a general overview of China’s legislative system, along with the theoretical claims and interdisciplinary analysis involved in the detailed discussion presented in the following chapters.

Despite the consolidation of Communist power and the encouragement of President Xi Jinping’s cult of personality, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has also surprisingly moved to expand judicial autonomy during Xi’s term in office. This chapter discusses that the years leading up to sweeping reforms to enhance the autonomy of China’s judges, local promotion systems for mid-ranking judges in some case study localities featured enhanced transparency, competition, and the routinization of judicial promotion procedures that departed from previous systems of direct nomination and appointment by local Party leaders. Based on nearly two years of in-country fieldwork, I present the broad contours that the expansion of the legal profession pressured judicial leadership to enact these and similar changes, a theory and approach that both challenges and contributes to the extant literature on comparative court politics and Chinese judicial politics.

This chapter provides a comprehensive account of the main argument of the book and its supporting evidence and limitations, describes developments in China’s judicial politics since 2016, and then discusses implications of this book for future research in the field. Framed in the context of nationwide reforms to enhance judicial autonomy between 2014 and 2016, which I find were motivated by a constellation of similar local concerns including judicial “brain drain,” rapid increases in the cost of living in urban China, and the major transformations of the legal profession particularly prevalent in high-end localities elucidated throughout this book.

This chapter describes and analyzes the law and practice concerning Chinese foreign relations law in the context of global environmental governance. It explains why Chinese foreign relations law is fragmented and unpredictable. Against this fragmentation, it focuses on the field of environmental law and analyses how “environmental diplomacy” plays a role in Chinese foreign relations law pertaining to the environment. To demonstrate general law and practice, the chapter focuses on two core issues, which are allocation of Chinese public powers on negotiating, concluding and approving international environmental treaties and agreements and international cooperation with global environmental institutions. Finally, the chapter explores two issues concerning the legal status of environmental treaties in China, their legal place and methods of implementation that ensure compliance.