Ying Xia on Strategic anthropocentrism: framing animal protection in China’s public interest litigation (JEL)

"Strategic anthropocentrism: framing animal protection in China’s public interest litigation"
Ying Xia
Journal of Environmental Law
Published online: December 2025

Abstract: This article investigates how Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) strategically mobilize environmental public interest litigation (EPIL) to advance animal protection in a legal system that is deeply anthropocentric and lacks dedicated animal welfare legislation. Drawing on a series of landmark cases, this study identifies key advocacy strategies that frame animal protection in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services; public health and biosecurity; and wildlife-related intermediary obligations. These frames allow NGOs to translate animal welfare claims into legally justifiable and administratively actionable harms, by aligning with state priorities such as ecological civilization, sustainable development, and public health. The study finds that finding that EPIL, when coupled with strategic framing, can operate as both a legal remedy, as well as expressive governance that helps to gradually expand the legal and moral imagination for nonhuman interests. Meanwhile, however, these framings also risk reinforcing the marginalization of animals whose protection cannot be fully justified through human-centred rationales.

Ying Xia on Guerrilla Lawyering: Mobile Resistance in China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation (LSR)

"Guerrilla Lawyering: Mobile Resistance in China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation"
Ying Xia
Law & Society Review, First View, pp. 1 - 27
Published online: September 2025

Abstract: This study examines the transformation of environmental public interest lawyering in China within an ever-tightening legal order, where activists confront both state suppression and co-optation. Utilizing qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with 49 environmental lawyers and activists, participant observations, and online ethnography, the research delineates two divergent models of legal mobilization. The conventional model prioritizes compliance with state regulations, employing impact litigation and consensus-building with state institutions to drive incremental environmental reforms, often at the cost of aligning with state priorities. In contrast, guerrilla lawyering emerges as an innovative strategy, leveraging decentralized networks, experimentalist litigation, flexible funding, and diffused media tactics to sustain activism while preserving autonomy. By transforming courts into platforms for generating critical information and exposing systemic vulnerabilities, guerrilla lawyering resists assimilation into state-controlled schemes. This approach not only ensures movement survival amidst repression but also enriches theoretical understandings of legal mobilization under authoritarianism by addressing the understudied risk of co-optation. These findings illuminate the resilience and ingenuity of activists in China’s constrained environmental advocacy landscape and offer a transferable framework for resistance for social movements in other authoritarian contexts, amid the global rise of authoritarian legality.

RGC Awards $3.5 Million in Research Funding to HKU Law 2025/26

Congratulations to our five colleagues who were successful in the 2025-2026 round of research grant funding by Hong Kong's Research Grants Council (RGC). The three General Research Fund (GRF) projects that were funded cover a range of topics, from examining the impact of “revolving-door” judges in the Chinese judicial system to investigating China’s efforts to reshape public interest lawyering to exploring the relationship between China’s legal system, financial markets, and economic development. Two Early Career Scheme (ECS) project were funded to study the Integration of China's Patent System and Social Credit System, and introduction of statutory recognition of same-sex couples in Hong Kong. The details of the new funded projects are as follows:

GRF:
Professor John Liu
The Revolving Door in the Chinese Judiciary and Its Economic Consequences: A Quantitative Study, HK$1,064,000

Professor Ying Xia
Nationalizing Legal Mobilization: The Transformation of Public Interest Lawyering under Xi Jinping, HK$679,000

Professor James Zeng
China's Path of Law and Finance, HK$746,000

ECS:
Professor Taorui Guan
Big Data-Driven Governance: A Study on the Integration of China's Patent System and Social Credit System, HK$630,925

Professor Stefano Osella
Recognising Same-sex Partnerships in Hong Kong: Constitutional and Human Rights Perspectives, HK$406,816

Ying Xia on Environmental Advocacy in a Globalising China: Non-Governmental Organisation Engagement with the Green Belt and Road Initiative (Journal of Contemporary Asia)

"Environmental Advocacy in a Globalising China: Non-Governmental Organisation Engagement with the Green Belt and Road Initiative"
Ying Xia

Journal of Contemporary Asia

Published online: October 2023

Abstract: Although the Belt and Road Initiative presents growth opportunities for less developed regions, it also raises concerns about negative environmental impacts and sustainability. Despite proliferating academic interest in China’s efforts to green the Belt and Road Initiative, the engagement of non-governmental organisations in policymaking has been understudied. This research marks the first empirical effort to examine the interactions between environmental non-governmental organisations and the Chinese government under the banner of a green Belt and Road Initiative. It finds that non-governmental organisations have employed four strategies to engage with the state-led initiative – civil diplomacy, development partnership, service provision, and outside reform – and that development partners and service providers have been more active than the others in shaping China’s Belt and Road Initiative-related environmental policies. This article elucidates civil society actors’ opportunities and constraints in greening the Belt and Road Initiative and non-governmental organisations–government dynamics in a non-democratic context.

Ying Xia et al on An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China's Environmental Public Interest Litigation (Transnational Environmental Law)

"An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China's Environmental Public Interest Litigation"

Ying Xia and Yueduan Wang

Transnational Environmental Law

Published online: 21 June 2023

Abstract: Increasing research has been devoted to examining collaborations between public and private actors in environmental regulation under neoliberal democracies. However, this public-private interaction in authoritarian regimes remains understudied. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature through an empirical examination of the interaction between environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and procuratorates in China's environmental public interest litigation. We find emerging complementarity: NGOs focus on new issues and target high-profile defendants to increase the socio-legal impact of their civil litigation, whereas procuratorates increasingly engage in administrative litigation against government agencies. This complementarity is shaped by the different legal opportunities for Chinese NGOs and procuratorates, as well as their respective institutional objectives and capacities. Their divergent regulatory preferences have also fostered synergy between these two actors, allowing them to collaborate on legal experimentation and innovation.

HKU Law Welcomes Two New Assistant Professors

HKU Law warmly welcomes two new socio-legal scholars who will explore questions concerning the Chinese judiciary, Chinese environmental policies, and Chinese investments in Africa and other places in the coming years.

Dr Benjamin Chen is an interdisciplinary legal researcher interested in regulatory and judicial institutions. He joins us from the National University of Singapore. His current research examines the scope for consequentialist reasoning in law, the diffusion of policy through the courts, and the impact of artificial intelligence on justice and its administration. Benjamin graduated with a JD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017 where he also received his PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy. In addition to his legal qualifications in the State of California, Benjamin holds a MA in Philosophy from University College London, a MSc in Applied Mathematics from the Ecole Polytechnique, and a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago. He was previously a postdoctoral research scholar and lecturer-in-law at Columbia University and served as a judicial law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has several interesting new articles on regulatory trade-offs, judicial legitimation in China, and partisan voting on the California Supreme Court pending publication in US law journals.  Benjamin will be teaching LLB Contract Law in his first year.

     Dr Ying Xia is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she completed her LLM and SJD studies. Her research seeks to weave everyday life experience into broader theories about the law, governance, and society, with a particular focus on environmental reform in China and the role of China in globalization. During her doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor William Alford, Ying conducted fieldwork in several East African countries, exploring the impact and regulatory challenge of Chinese investment in the region. Ying also holds a Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Economics from Peking University.  Ying's research areas include environmental law, international law, and law and public policy, with a focus on experience from developing countries.  Ying will be teaching LLB Introduction to Chinese Law and other specialist Chinese law courses.