Chinese Law Prof Blog

Reports on finance in East Asia

The World Bank and the University of Hong Kong’s Asian Institute of International Financial Law (AIIFL) have each published reports on finance in East Asia. The World Bank's report, entitled "The Road to Robust East Asian Financial Markets," is available here. The AIIFL's report, available here, is intended to support the WB's report through a study of property rights, collateral, and creditor rights in East Asia. The study includes comparative appraisals of current national bankruptcy and securitisation laws. According to the blurb,

AIIFL's study concludes that while much has been done in building the legal and institutional framework to support property rights and their use in East Asia, considerable weaknesses remain in most countries, especially in relation to enforcement, and in the comprehensiveness of national law.

ABA comments on draft revisions to Patent Law

On Sept. 12, 2006, the American Bar Association's Section of International Law, together with the
Sections of Intellectual Property Law and Science & Technology Law, submitted joint comments on proposed amendments to China's Patent Law to the State Intellectual Property Office. The comments are available here: Joint Comments

Baidu accused of self-interested censorship

I previously posted here about Baidu's new Chinese law search function, and various bloggers have posted about Chinese censorship of internet search engines (see, for example, the Tech Law Prof Blog posts here and here). According to the Blawgdog blog, however, Baidu is also engaged in politically unnecessary censorship of its law search results, eliminating links to cases where the result was unfavorable to Baidu. For the full story, click here.

National Bureau of Asian Research "Next Generation" fellowships

Although not directly related to Chinese law, the following may be of interest to some readers:

FELLOWSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT
"The Next Generation: Leadership in Asian Affairs"
The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)

The National Bureau of Asian Research is pleased to announce "The Next Generation: Leadership in Asian Affairs" fellowship for 2007–2008. Recent master's degree recipients are encouraged to apply for this year-long fellowship that focuses on bridging the gap between scholarship and policymaking. The fellowship will be based at NBR's headquarters in Seattle. Fellows will collaborate with leading scholars to publish research and share their findings with the policymaking community in Washington, D.C.

The Next Generation Leadership program is breaking new ground by mentoring and immersing young Asia specialists from a wide variety of fields and interests in the skills and the practice of bridging the gap between scholarship and policy. Each fellow will receive a fellowship award, as well as travel and research-related expenses.

Application deadline is January 15, 2007. Fellowships begin June 4, 2007. For further information and application materials please visit http://www.nbr.org/NextGeneration. A poster version of this announcement is available at http://files.nbr.org/NBRFellowshipPoster.pdf.