The US-China Trade Negotiation: A Contract Theory Perspective
Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law
黃乾亨中國法研究中心
International Speaker Series 2022-2023
In Spring 2023, the Philip K. H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law will invite scholars from multiple jurisdictions to give interactive talks on their most up-to-date ideas and publications. This International Speaker Series will contribute fresh perspectives to help us better understand the past, present, and future of Chinese and global governance, legal institutions, economics, and finance. In their presentation of five illuminating topics, the speakers will offer insights on how to make sense of Chinese judicial trends, China’s dream of legal cosmopolitanism, its reinvention of money, China’s performative governance at the street-level of its bureaucracy, and its relative economic decline in the 18-19th centuries. Anyone with a keen interest in China is most welcome to join us!
A Fireside Chat with Benjamin Liebman on Chinese Judicial Trend
Date & Time: January 10, 2023 (Tuesday) 15:30 - 16:30
Speaker: Professor Benjamin Liebman, Columbia Law School
Discussants: Professor Hualing Fu, University of Hong Kong
Professor Xin He, University of Hong Kong
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, HKU (Live via Zoom)
Watch previous video: Please click HERE
Legal Systems Inside Out: American Legal Exceptionalism and China’s Dream of Legal Cosmopolitanism
Date & Time: February 3, 2023 (Friday) 12:00 - 13:00
Speaker: Dr. Matthew Erie, University of Oxford
Discussant: Dr. Jedidiah Kroncke, University of Hong Kong
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, HKU (Live via Zoom)
Description:
This talk explores the relationship between a legal systems’ foreign-facing elements and its domestic ones. Contrary to “dualistic” theories which suggest that a single legal system may encompass qualitatively different regimes regarding foreign and domestic legal questions, Erie takes the view that gaps between the foreign-facing and domestic aspects of a legal system may threaten that system’s legitimacy and, in turn, its sustainability. Compatibility between the foreign/external and domestic/internal aspects of a legal system could be measured across a range of categories including provision of justice, fairness, and efficiency. Erie focuses on the recognition of difference, which means both the nature and source of law and of legal authorities. The question posed is whether a legal system can regard difference disparately between its foreign-facing and domestic aspects. Erie addresses this question through a comparison between the PRC and the US, the two most powerful economies in the world and which are locked in a trade-cum-tech war.
Date & Time: March 29, 2023 (Wednesday) 09:30 - 10:30
Zoom only
Speaker: Martin Chorzempa, The Peterson Institute for International Economics
Discussant: Professor Douglas Arner, University of Hong Kong
Description:
This book talk draws a startling picture of how China’s revolution in finance and technology is changing both Wall Street and the way individuals manage their personal finances. China reinvented money with lightning speed, transforming a backward cash-based finance system into one centered on super-apps created by technology giants. We need to understand China’s cashless revolution for reasons ranging from the macroeconomic to issues of personal liberty.
Registration: Please click HERE
Date & Time: April 12, 2023 (Wednesday) 20:00 - 21:00
Zoom only
Speaker: Dr. Iza Ding, University of Pittsburgh
Discussant: Dr. Ying Xia, University of Hong Kong
Description:
This book talk shows how the state can shape public perceptions and defuse crises through the theatrical deployment of language, symbols, and gestures of good governance―performative governance. It unpacks the black box of street-level bureaucracy in China and demonstrates how China’s environmental bureaucrats deal with intense public scrutiny over pollution when they lack the authority to actually improve the physical environment.
Registration: Please click HERE
Date & Time: May 31, 2023 (Wednesday) 12:00 - 13:00
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, HKU (Also available on Zoom)
Speaker: Professor Taisu Zhang, Yale University
Discussant: Dr. Jedidiah Kroncke, University of Hong Kong
Description:
This book talk looks at China’s relative economic decline in the 18th and 19th centuries. The decline was believed to be related to China’s weak fiscal institutions and limited revenue. Zhang argues that this fiscal weakness was fundamentally ideological in nature. Belief systems created through a confluence of traditional political ethics and the trauma of dynastic change imposed unusually deep and powerful constraints on fiscal policymaking and institutions throughout the final 250 years of China’s imperial history.
Registration: Please click HERE