China has emerged as a champion of economic globalization, particularly through building global s... more China has emerged as a champion of economic globalization, particularly through building global supply chains, financing overseas infrastructure and energy projects, and exporting labour to developing countries throughout the world. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013, is a keystone in China’s economic globalization. The BRI emphasizes connectivity: policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and ‘people-to-people’. Despite the broad significance of Chinese economic globalization, its legal dimensions are still poorly understood. China, Law and Development (CLD) is an international and multi-disciplinary research project that aims to study the legal and regulatory aspects of this stage of globalization. This symposium is comprised of articles by CLD research associates who investigate various questions, including labour rights, skilled migration facilitation, investment review, multilateralism, and patronage and clientelism. This article introduces the symposium, and it does so through the example of China’s role in global health governance. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic in late 2019 in China, which has since become a worldwide pandemic, has obstructed BRI connectivity through delinking global supply chains, blocking labour migration, freezing markets, and exacerbating Sinophobia. In response, China has sought to lead an effort in improving global health governance through participation in international organizations and strengthening its bilateral ties through health aid and technology export. The coronavirus pandemic may offer the Chinese an opportunity to lead a more circumscribed re-globalization, although China faces significant challenges.
China shapes transnational data governance by supplying digital infrastructure to emerging market... more China shapes transnational data governance by supplying digital infrastructure to emerging markets. The prevailing explanation for this phenomenon is “digital authoritarianism” by which China exports not only its technology but also its values and governance system to host states. Contrary to the one-size-fits-all digital authoritarianism thesis, this Article theorizes a “Beijing Effect,” a combination of “push” and “pull” factors that explains China’s growing influence in data governance beyond its borders. Governments in emerging economies demand Chinese-built digital infrastructures and emulate China’s approach to data governance in pursuit of “data sovereignty” and digital development. China’s “Digital Silk Road,” a massive effort to build the physical components of digital infrastructure (e.g., fiber-optic cables, antennas, and data centers), to enhance the interoperability of digital ecosystems in such developing states materializes the Beijing Effect. Its main drivers are Chinese technology companies that increasingly provide telecommunication and e-commerce services across the globe. The Beijing Effect contrasts with the “Brussels Effect” whereby companies’ global operations gravitate towards the EU’s regulations. It also deviates from US efforts to shape global data governance through instruments of international economic law. Based on a study of normative documents and empirical fieldwork conducted in a key host state over a four-year period, we explain how the Beijing Effect works in practice and assess its impact on developing countries. We argue that “data sovereignty” is illusory as the Chinese party state retains varying degrees of control over Chinese enterprises that supply digital infrastructure and urge development of legal infrastructures commensurate with digital development strategies
This chapter asks the question: what happens when the state’s form of legalism no longer recogniz... more This chapter asks the question: what happens when the state’s form of legalism no longer recognizes the basis of claims to property, bases which nonetheless may flourish beyond state property regimes? To address this question, the chapter brings into dialogue, on the one hand, theories of property rights that equate property ownership with personhood and, on the other hand, anthropological discussions of value, in particular, neo-Maussian approaches to persons and things. Whereas such approaches may agree that property is the basis of human flourishing, the state’s non-recognition or outright violent destruction of certain grounds for owning property do not result in the end of such attachments. Rather, attachments may survive their “death” by state legalism, producing a condition of the “afterlife” of property. I examine this condition through the empirical case of property contests (both buildings and land) in contemporary China. Specifically, property attains an afterlife when state legalism no longer monopolizes the categories of property, but rather, kinship, religious communities, and village life generate their own forms of legalism centred on property. I provide a number of examples of this effect that show property holders, while not wholly rejecting the legitimacy of state law, nonetheless question, challenge, contest, and reinterpret its logics. The afterlife of property is not limited to religious sites. The first case, for example, is that of a Han woman in Beijing who seeks the restitution of her family-owned courtyard based on a private property argument that exposes the violent arbitrariness of state law, specifically its omission of compensation for Cultural Revolution-era illegal takings. Similarly, in the second case, a Chinese Muslim (Hui) man encounters contemporary echoes of Cultural Revolution unlawfulness in local corruption in the real estate industry in northwestern China. Third, along these lines, a distinct Hui group also encountering local corruption declines to commoditize land they hold sacred due to its ties to their own history. Lastly, in the fourth example, another Hui group must weigh the competing valuations of property in multiple legalisms, those of state law and the market and those of their own Sufi-inspired legalism. Collectively, the examples stand for the idea that property’s value inheres in legalisms grounded in notions of family, home, and faith and that individuals’ sense of rights’ security is born from such legalisms. Such interpretations create strong affective ties which long outlive the formal basis of property rights in state law, producing irresolvable tensions — property’s afterlife.
Review of edited volume that explores the limits of state law in addressing property disputes in ... more Review of edited volume that explores the limits of state law in addressing property disputes in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
critical in her conclusion about the financial supremacy of Hollywood, even commenting on the ‘ov... more critical in her conclusion about the financial supremacy of Hollywood, even commenting on the ‘overpowering concern with box office’ in the book’s final paragraph (p. 164). However, the very idea that the people who made the films that Wang lauds in a far more sympathetic fashion might have done so in order to sell theatre tickets (rather than make self-reflective social commentaries) is often simply glossed over. Hollywood may be ‘remaking’ Hong Kong and Chinese films in the interests of profit, but one finds it hard to believe that profit did not play at least some role in shaping the work of Shanghai auteurs in the 1930s as well. Despite these concerns, Wang’s Remaking Chinese Cinema remains a very readable and original book, and it will prove to be of great interest to students and scholars of film studies and Chinese studies more generally.
China has emerged as a champion of economic globalization, particularly through building global s... more China has emerged as a champion of economic globalization, particularly through building global supply chains, financing overseas infrastructure and energy projects, and exporting labour to developing countries throughout the world. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013, is a keystone in China’s economic globalization. The BRI emphasizes connectivity: policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and ‘people-to-people’. Despite the broad significance of Chinese economic globalization, its legal dimensions are still poorly understood. China, Law and Development (CLD) is an international and multi-disciplinary research project that aims to study the legal and regulatory aspects of this stage of globalization. This symposium is comprised of articles by CLD research associates who investigate various questions, including labour rights, skilled migration facilitation, investment review, multilateralism, and patronage and clientelism. This article introduces the symposium, and it does so through the example of China’s role in global health governance. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic in late 2019 in China, which has since become a worldwide pandemic, has obstructed BRI connectivity through delinking global supply chains, blocking labour migration, freezing markets, and exacerbating Sinophobia. In response, China has sought to lead an effort in improving global health governance through participation in international organizations and strengthening its bilateral ties through health aid and technology export. The coronavirus pandemic may offer the Chinese an opportunity to lead a more circumscribed re-globalization, although China faces significant challenges.
China shapes transnational data governance by supplying digital infrastructure to emerging market... more China shapes transnational data governance by supplying digital infrastructure to emerging markets. The prevailing explanation for this phenomenon is “digital authoritarianism” by which China exports not only its technology but also its values and governance system to host states. Contrary to the one-size-fits-all digital authoritarianism thesis, this Article theorizes a “Beijing Effect,” a combination of “push” and “pull” factors that explains China’s growing influence in data governance beyond its borders. Governments in emerging economies demand Chinese-built digital infrastructures and emulate China’s approach to data governance in pursuit of “data sovereignty” and digital development. China’s “Digital Silk Road,” a massive effort to build the physical components of digital infrastructure (e.g., fiber-optic cables, antennas, and data centers), to enhance the interoperability of digital ecosystems in such developing states materializes the Beijing Effect. Its main drivers are Chinese technology companies that increasingly provide telecommunication and e-commerce services across the globe. The Beijing Effect contrasts with the “Brussels Effect” whereby companies’ global operations gravitate towards the EU’s regulations. It also deviates from US efforts to shape global data governance through instruments of international economic law. Based on a study of normative documents and empirical fieldwork conducted in a key host state over a four-year period, we explain how the Beijing Effect works in practice and assess its impact on developing countries. We argue that “data sovereignty” is illusory as the Chinese party state retains varying degrees of control over Chinese enterprises that supply digital infrastructure and urge development of legal infrastructures commensurate with digital development strategies
This chapter asks the question: what happens when the state’s form of legalism no longer recogniz... more This chapter asks the question: what happens when the state’s form of legalism no longer recognizes the basis of claims to property, bases which nonetheless may flourish beyond state property regimes? To address this question, the chapter brings into dialogue, on the one hand, theories of property rights that equate property ownership with personhood and, on the other hand, anthropological discussions of value, in particular, neo-Maussian approaches to persons and things. Whereas such approaches may agree that property is the basis of human flourishing, the state’s non-recognition or outright violent destruction of certain grounds for owning property do not result in the end of such attachments. Rather, attachments may survive their “death” by state legalism, producing a condition of the “afterlife” of property. I examine this condition through the empirical case of property contests (both buildings and land) in contemporary China. Specifically, property attains an afterlife when state legalism no longer monopolizes the categories of property, but rather, kinship, religious communities, and village life generate their own forms of legalism centred on property. I provide a number of examples of this effect that show property holders, while not wholly rejecting the legitimacy of state law, nonetheless question, challenge, contest, and reinterpret its logics. The afterlife of property is not limited to religious sites. The first case, for example, is that of a Han woman in Beijing who seeks the restitution of her family-owned courtyard based on a private property argument that exposes the violent arbitrariness of state law, specifically its omission of compensation for Cultural Revolution-era illegal takings. Similarly, in the second case, a Chinese Muslim (Hui) man encounters contemporary echoes of Cultural Revolution unlawfulness in local corruption in the real estate industry in northwestern China. Third, along these lines, a distinct Hui group also encountering local corruption declines to commoditize land they hold sacred due to its ties to their own history. Lastly, in the fourth example, another Hui group must weigh the competing valuations of property in multiple legalisms, those of state law and the market and those of their own Sufi-inspired legalism. Collectively, the examples stand for the idea that property’s value inheres in legalisms grounded in notions of family, home, and faith and that individuals’ sense of rights’ security is born from such legalisms. Such interpretations create strong affective ties which long outlive the formal basis of property rights in state law, producing irresolvable tensions — property’s afterlife.
Review of edited volume that explores the limits of state law in addressing property disputes in ... more Review of edited volume that explores the limits of state law in addressing property disputes in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
critical in her conclusion about the financial supremacy of Hollywood, even commenting on the ‘ov... more critical in her conclusion about the financial supremacy of Hollywood, even commenting on the ‘overpowering concern with box office’ in the book’s final paragraph (p. 164). However, the very idea that the people who made the films that Wang lauds in a far more sympathetic fashion might have done so in order to sell theatre tickets (rather than make self-reflective social commentaries) is often simply glossed over. Hollywood may be ‘remaking’ Hong Kong and Chinese films in the interests of profit, but one finds it hard to believe that profit did not play at least some role in shaping the work of Shanghai auteurs in the 1930s as well. Despite these concerns, Wang’s Remaking Chinese Cinema remains a very readable and original book, and it will prove to be of great interest to students and scholars of film studies and Chinese studies more generally.
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