Weilin Xiao awarded the Hessel Yntema Prize 2025

Congratulations to Weilin Xiao, whose article “Expansion and Restriction: Divergent Paths Towards Modernizing Family Law in China and Japan, 1868-1930” was awarded the Hessel Yntema Prize 2025 by the American Society of Comparative Law. This article forms the first part of Weilin's doctoral dissertation, which he is currently developing into a book manuscript

Background on the prize: Established in 1991 to honor the first editor in chief of the American Journal of Comparative Law, the Hessel Yntema prize of $1,500 recognizes the “most outstanding” article by a younger scholar under 40 years of age published in a recent volume of the Journal. Please click here for more details regarding the prize.

Weilin Xiao on Expansion and Restriction: Divergent Paths Towards Modernizing Family Laws in Japan and China, 1868–1930 (The American Journal of Comparative Law)

"Expansion and Restriction: Divergent Paths Towards Modernizing Family Laws in Japan and China, 1868–1930"
Weilin Xiao
The American Journal of Comparative Law
Published online: August 2024

Abstract: Before their encounters with Western powers in the nineteenth century, Chinese and Japanese societies were deeply embedded in traditional family systems that formed the backbone of their social structures. However, with the onset of legal modernization, these nations adopted nearly diametrically opposed strategies for reforming their customary family laws. Primarily, Japanese legal reformers under the Meiji regime bolstered the family’s authority and emphasized its political role. In stark contrast, the Chinese legal reformers during the late Qing and Republican periods curtailed family authority and diminished its significance. While the modernization of family laws in Japan and China has been the subject of scholarly research respectively, the differences between the two countries and the reasons behind their distinct approaches have not been adequately explored. This Article seeks to fill this gap.

Through a comparative analysis of the legislative histories of both countries, this Article argues that their divergent paths stemmed from differences in the historical functions of family systems and the modern political contexts encountered by legal reformers during the period of legal modernization. In Japan, the family system was historically politically connected with the state, and the Meiji regime solidified its control over this system through modern codification efforts. Consequently, Meiji political elites saw the integration of the populace into the new absolutist imperial regime as advantageous, leveraging the political loyalty of families to achieve this. In contrast, the Chinese family system had become politically disconnected from the state by the late imperial era. In the aftermath of the Republican Revolution, the Guomindang regime navigated a landscape of rival political forces that significantly challenged its authority. Political elites aimed to dismantle customary family laws to weaken the traditional family system, which they viewed as a threat to governmental centralization and societal unity. They also sought to project a modern, liberal image to garner wider political support.

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Weilin Xiao

Welcome to Prof. Weilin Xiao, who joins the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor.

Weilin Xiao’s academic interests include family law, comparative law, and legal history, with a focus on the East Asian region. In 2021, Weilin’s paper, “Expansion and Restriction: A Comparative Study of Modernization of Family Laws in Japan and China,” was awarded the Colin B. Picker Graduate Prize by the American Society of Comparative Law.

His J.S.D. dissertation, currently undergoing revision for publication as a monograph, concerns the divergent approaches toward modernizing family laws in Japan and China. Through a comparative perspective, Weilin seeks to answer why Japan and China coordinated legal transplantation and their own customary family laws differently, and how such choices shaped the modernization of those countries in the twentieth century.

Weilin obtained his J.S.D. degree from Yale Law School in 2024, following his LL.M. degree earned in 2019. Weilin was a Yale Legal History Forum Fellow in 2023. During the 2022–2023 academic year, Weilin was a Yale Fox International Fellow at the School of Law, Waseda University. He spent the 2019–2020 academic year as a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, under the International Dissertation Research Fellowship awarded by the Yale MacMillan Center. Prior to Yale, Weilin completed his LL.B. and first LL.M. degree at Peking University.