Chinese Law Prof Blog

English-language law review at Tsinghua Law School

I have received the following announcement:

New Law Review at Tsinghua: The Tsinghua China Law Review

The Tsinghua China Law Review is a new academic law journal at the Tsinghua School of Law in Beijing.  The TCLR will publish scholarly articles on topics related to China's laws and legal system.  The journal is the first of its kind in China, as it is published in English and is student-managed.  Articles will be edited by a diverse staff of Chinese and international students.  The TCLR will follow the format of a US law review, will be printed in the US, and in the future will be available through Westlaw, Lexis, and HeinOnline.  For more details, please see the website (http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/docsn/fxy/tclr/tclr.htm).

For all scholars in the China law field, there are still a few days remaining to submit articles for the Spring issue!  The period for submissions closes on April 3rd.  Please see the website for submissions details.

Carlton Willey
Editor-in-Chief

State Department human rights report on China

It's been quite a while since I last blogged, so I'm a bit behind on current events.

Last February, the US State Department issued its annual report on human rights in China - something it does by congressional mandate for every country. The report for China is here; there's also one for Taiwan here.

Predictably, the Chinese government responded - not with a statement that addressed any actual inaccuracies in the report, but with a report on human rights problems in the United States (Chinese | English). I have never understood why the Chinese government feels that this is an appropriate or convincing response to criticism. Does Chen Guangcheng feel better in his prison cell in China - and should the rest of us feel better about this travesty of justice - knowing that there were 17,000 murders in the United States in 2007? Moreover, it does not take a great legal mind to recognize that in issuing such a report, China completely undercuts its own position that such reports are an unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

Since the State Department's report is not footnoted, it would be relatively easy for the government to accuse the State Department of simply making the stuff up. That won't wash, however, with the meticulously sourced human rights report produced annually by the Congressional-Executive China Commission; the latest one is here, tipping the scales at an astounding (by my count) 1,743 footnotes. Of course, footnoting a claim doesn't make it true, but it makes a discussion about the truth or falsity of the claim much more feasible.

I am told that the US government last year posted the Chinese government's critical report on the web site of the US Embassy in Beijing; I can't find that report or this year's on the web site now, but hope the US government has not abandoned this excellent practice.

USTR releases 2008 report on China's compliance with WTO obligations

You can download the report here. I offer no comments because I haven't read it yet.

Chinese state-party report to the UN Human Rights Council

The Chinese government has submitted its state-party report to the UN Human Rights Council in preparation for the upcoming review of China before the Council. This is part of the Universal Periodic Review system under which every state is reviewed.

• Report
• Translation (probably not available until after the UPR session)

HT: Nicholas Bequelin.

CECC issues 2008 report on human rights in China

Here's the link.

New report from China Labour Bulletin

Here's a new report [English|French|Chinese] from China Labour Bulletin, Han Dongfang's Hong-Kong based labor rights organization. It's called "No Way Out: Worker Activism in China's State-Owned Enterprise Reforms". A blurb describing the report is here; it states that the report

is based on five years of research, and draws extensively on CLB’s litigation in defence of worker’s rights. The report uses five illustrative cases to explore the many ways in which enterprise restructuring and privatization violated the human rights of laid-off workers; including their systematic exclusion from official channels of redress, the criminalization of labour protests, and the denial of workers’ rights to social security, to an adequate standard of living, to freedom of association and to freedom from arbitrary detention.

New book on Chinese legal history

The Journal of Asian Studies has just published a favorable review of the following book; looks interesting.

Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment. Edited by Robert E. Hegel and Katherine Carlitz. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. xv, 343 pp. $65.00 (cloth)

China's 2008 Trade Policy Review report now available at WTO web site

The above document as well as the WTO Secretariat's report are available here.

Latest issue of CECC newsletter available

The latest issue of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's newsletter, "China Human Rights and Rule of Law Update," is now available (PDF from this site | HTML from CECC site).

International Trade Commission releases report finding decreased Chinese governmental involvement in economic decision-making

The BNA's WTO Reporter reports as follows (below is just an excerpt):

China's government is less involved now than in the past in attempting to influence decisionmaking in various sectors of the economy, the International Trade Commission found in a report released April 10.

The report, China: Description of Selected Government Practices and Policies Affecting Decision Making in the Economy, is the first of three requested by the House Ways and Means Committee. In the first report, the committee asked the ITC to describe practices and policies China's central, provincial, and local government bodies use to influence decisionmaking in the economy, including in the manufacturing, agricultural, and services sectors.

"The pace and magnitude of China's economic changes create challenges to understanding the role of the government in firm-level decisionmaking in China's manufacturing, agricultural, and services sectors. Although the extent of government involvement varies by sector in China's economy, the government is less involved than in the past," the ITC report found.

A PDF copy of the report (Investigation No. 332-492, USITC Publication 3978, December 2007) is available here. You can also get a copy by sending an e-mail request to Pubrequest@usitc.gov.