China's Approaches to International Law since the Opium War

Chan, Phil C.W.

doi:10.1017/s0922156514000399

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…33 The mid-sphere of partial political recognition was granted to Turkey, Persia, China, Siam, and Japan. 34 In this view, international law, and its core principles, among which state sovereignty, could have been extended to countries with partial political recognition, i.e., not fully considered participants to the 'family of nations', 35 only after 'completely recasting all non-Western political entities into the mould of modern European states, which in turn required the irreparable destruction of all traditional forms of polity in existence'. 36 The limited political recognition of China and Japan in this conception of international relations was all too painfully reminded by the imposition by Western powers of so-called unequal treaties, as a result inter alia of their provisions on extraterritoriality in both the competent court and the applicable law to Western operators.…”

Section: A Quest For 'Parity With All Nations'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Parity with all nations’: The ‘coolie’ trade and the quest for recognition by China and Japan

Moli¹

2021

Leiden Journal of International Law

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the quest for sovereign equality by China and Japan as it unfolded in a specific historical moment, the third quarter of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on the debate around the ‘coolie trade’, i.e., the traffic of Chinese indentured labourers, which offered an opportunity for non-Western countries such as China and Japan to position themselves with respect to Western conceptions of ‘modernity’ or ‘civilization’ and thereby advance their quest for ‘parity with all nations’. Through a study of the Maria Luz case, decided in the early 1870s by Czar Alexander II and drafted by de Martens, the article sheds light on the different approaches of Japan and China with respect to international law at this critical historical juncture. Specifically, it shows that, although the coolie trade mostly affected China, it was Japan who first managed to reap a parity dividend by firmly condemning the practice, whereas China’s action was steered by the circumstances. Eventually, however, China’s growing interest in Chinese populations abroad paved the way for the establishment of its first permanent diplomatic representations overseas. For both countries, the events encapsulated by the Maria Luz case unveil an important, yet overlooked, moment in their quest for parity with all nations and, more generally, in their engagement with international law.

show abstract

Section: A Quest For 'Parity With All Nations'mentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Parity with all nations’: The ‘coolie’ trade and the quest for recognition by China and Japan

Moli¹

2021

Leiden Journal of International Law

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Indeed, the historiography of international law, even when half a decade has past, is crucial in dismantling current structural deficiencies (Chan, 2014;Davitti, 2012;Miles, 2010;Sornarajah, 1997;Sornarajah, 2006). Such a critical approach is necessary to potentially create a more legitimate and balanced system.…”

Section: The Importance Of History and A Third World Approach To International Investment Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…China's international law approach and general scepticism has been explained with China's exposure to Western oppression and the legitimation of this oppression by international law (Chan, 2014). It has been argued that China was denied equality in international law in the 19 th century as "Western powers, supported by their legal theorists whose work justified colonialism and Western legal norms and principles, devised the notion that only they constituted the 'family of nations'", from which China was excluded on account of its alleged inferior standards of civilization (Chan, 2014).…”

Section: China Vis-à-vis "Western" Principles: Understanding Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third World scholars perceive current debates about and heightened scrutiny of inter alia human rights' validity, normativity and implementation as being abused and even "manipulated" by the Western world (Chan, 2014). China specifically, "the other", seems to be under heightened scrutiny due to its emergence in economic strength and ambiguous behaviour within its international relations; a behaviour that the majority of Western actors has yet to comprehend.…”

Section: Hypocrisies In the Current Legitimacy Debate?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Power and Justice in International Investment Law: China’s Rise and Its Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations vis-à-vis the African Host State Population

Hankings-Evans¹

2016

AEAA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The increasing economic engagement of emerging states such as China raises concerns, especially in Western scholarly work, as to the growing influence and negative impact of China on international law. South-South investment relations are especially being put under heightened scrutiny. In this regard, it has been argued that the rise in economic legalisation efforts, for instance the signing of BITs, would politically alter the balance of power between developed and developing states. The present article intends to take a closer look at the human rights implications of Chinese investment agreements with African states. It, therefore, firstly identifies a lack of justice-based provisions that hinders the systemic integration of human rights law and international investment law. Secondly, it suggests that China's human rights approach when engaging in investment relations does not necessarily differ from investment approaches of traditional partners since China utilises the underlying power implications by Westernising its investment treaties. Yet, the overall failed integration of justice considerations into international investment law must rather be considered a result of both structural deficiencies and colonial legacy, a legacy that till today hinders essentially the implementation of policy space, human rights and the right to development.

show abstract

“…However, some set of disparities in such as state sovereignty, human rights, and cyberspace have been the primary targets of western political and academic criticisms. These external critiques, conversely, seem to function as one of the internal catalysts of consolidating and expediting Chinese international legal scholars' commitments to radicalize a Chinese school of international law (e.g., Chan, 2014;Chen, 2017;Su, 2014;Tang, 2015;. In fact, the pertinent efforts to establish a Chinese school of international law have been initiated since as early as the 1950s by Chinese academics, the pioneering works of which were strongly influenced by the dichotomy of socialist and capitalist perspectives of international law (e.g., Hu, 1958;Qiu, 1958Qiu, , 1993.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

2020

AJIS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The mainstream of international legal academia has started to address a distinctive fundamental question of whether international law is international in recent years, in which national differences in terms of the understandings of and approaches to international law have been (re)recognized and accentuated. Thanks to its increasing importance and influence in the international community, the ways in which China engages with a variety of international legal issues and topics have garnered more attention from the so-called western scholars. Meanwhile, Chinese international legal scholars have also committed to establishing a Chinese school of international law through which to intensively and comprehensively showcase its own characteristics in this regard. Against this backdrop, this article aims to unveil the underestimated part of its characteristics concerning the socio-legal scholarship in China's international law research by taking the interdisciplinary study of international law and history as an example. To that end, this article first reviews the overall configuration of international law research in China and roughly summarizes the current "Chinese characteristics" as follows: 1. The ternary, multipolar, and marginal morphology of the scholarly field of international law; 2. The China-based, trending topic-driven, and positive law-oriented contents of international legal scholarship. These characteristics also imply the present dominance of the doctrinal tradition in Chinese international legal scholarship, which has impeded the interdisciplinary collaboration between international law and other disciplines or fields of research. However, this article also recognizes that the emergence of socio-legal approaches to international law in China by assessing the status quo of research on international law and history in particular and international law and other social sciences in general, although the voices of this group of interdisciplinary academics are still relatively feeble.

show abstract

China's Approaches to International Law since the Opium War

Cited by 19 publications

References 38 publications

‘Parity with all nations’: The ‘coolie’ trade and the quest for recognition by China and Japan

‘Parity with all nations’: The ‘coolie’ trade and the quest for recognition by China and Japan

Power and Justice in International Investment Law: China’s Rise and Its Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations vis-à-vis the African Host State Population

Untitled

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About