Jedidiah Kroncke on Sino-American (De)Coupling: Economic Integration Through De-Democratizing Work (CJTL)

"Sino-American (De)Coupling: Economic Integration Through De-Democratizing Work"
Jedidiah Kroncke
Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
Published online: June 2025

Abstract: The concept of “decoupling” has quickly taken center stage in American and Chinese politics. Far beyond issues of international trade, the term has become a mutual domestic focal point for legitimizing new industrial and technology policy regimes. This rapid change has reversed the basic terms of the post-1978 U.S.-China relationship—turning each nation away from an aggressive embrace of economic globalization and towards an equally aggressive embrace of economic nationalism. Leaders in both countries now highlight the other as possessing polar opposite values, framing regulatory reform as demanded by these divergent values and as part of an existential international struggle.

Yet little attention has been given to how countries, now cast as antagonists with divergent values, came to have the most deeply intertwined major economies on the planet. While the sources of modern Sino-American economic intimacy are diverse, this Article focuses on how a convergence in assumptions regarding the ademocratic nature of the workplace powerfully facilitated this engagement. In tandem, isomorphic changes in U.S. and Chinese workplace regulation placed increasing emphasis on regulating employment contracts while minimizing any form of collective bargaining in favor of authoritarian notions of corporate governance. These distinct but parallel trajectories of workplace de- democratization manifested in another telling, if surprising, modern convergence: the promotion of employee ownership. On both sides of the Pacific, the ideal of employee ownership was advanced as a means of soothing the displacement of each country’s tradition of economic citizenship. Employee participation through share ownership never materialized as a significant aspect of either economy during this time, though it repeatedly found, and still finds, great rhetorical resonance in otherwise opposed political systems. Tellingly, the employee-ownership instruments that did develop were undermined by a strikingly similar set of legal techniques preventing employee-owners from contributing to more democratic workplaces.

Ultimately, this mutual process of de-democratization points to an implication current decoupling rhetoric actively avoids: that fundamental differences in formal political organization appear to have strikingly minimal impact on their citizens’ lived experiences of work and economic citizenship. This politically inconvenient commonality is critical for both necessary for understanding how this historical process of economic integration occurred and why coercive state power drives decoupling—rather than emerging as a private product of divergent values. Thus, while the future of U.S.-China relations is both consequential and uncertain, the rush to reframe the relationship must address unsettling questions underlying the two countries’ modern history of economic integration.

Shahla Ali's Project Update with the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

With a growing attention to inclusivity and representation in the context of increased global integration, Professor Shahla Ali's research is inspired by the necessity to expand inclusivity and collaboration in the development of global legal instruments, as well as in the study and participation in cross-border dispute resolution and in the resolution of infrastructure disputes.

Her work includes "Forming Transnational Dispute Settlement Norms. Soft Law and the Role of UNCITRAL''s Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific", "Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution", "Diversity in International Arbitration", and a recent article "The Seeming Paradox of Prevention".

To learn more about this, and to hear Professor Ali talk about her research on access to justice, watch this short video prepared for the ITA Academic Council "What I Am Working On" project.

(Please click here to view the original post prepared by ITA on LinkedIn.)

Rebecca Lee on Transnational Legal Ordering of Modern Trust Law (CUP book chapter)

"Transnational Legal Ordering of Modern Trust Law"
Rebecca Lee

in Seth Davis (ed), Thilo Kuntz (ed), Gregory Shaffer (ed), Transnational Fiduciary Law, (Cambridge University Press, January 2024), pp. 169-187
Published online: 22 November 2023

Summary: This chapter studies transnational legal orders (TLOs) in the context of trusts and demonstrates that such ordering is evident in the processes through which modern trust norms develop and flow across borders to become a substantive body of transnational and comparative trust law. By reference to innovations and transformations in trust embraced by offshore trust jurisdictions and the rise of the civil law trust in East Asia, this chapter argues that modern trust norms produce multiplicities of legal orders that transcend both offshore and onshore jurisdictions, as well as both common law and civil law jurisdictions.

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.

New Book Edited by Shahla Ali: Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution (Routledge)

Comparative and Transnational Dispute Resolution
Edited by Shahla Ali
Routledge 
Published in February 2023
270 pp.

Book Description: This edited volume presents research and policy insights into the theory and practice of dispute systems reform in diverse jurisdictions. It highlights how important extra-judicial mechanisms are for resolving cross-border disputes, as evidenced both by the breadth of scholarship dedicated to the issue and the proliferation of parties resorting to non-litigious dispute resolution mechanisms in recent years.

     Drawing on selected case studies, the book examines the impact of comparative research and policy analysis in advancing reform of dispute resolution institutions at both the regional and global levels. It explores the challenges and opportunities of understanding and assessing developments in systems of dispute resolution in diverse social and political contexts through comparative research.

     With a growing number of disputes which have come to involve cross-border issues, anyone interested in transnational and comparative dispute resolution will find this book a useful reference.

Reviews: 

‘An extraordinary collection of comparative perspectives is presented in this engaging book. It is arguably more important than at any time in the past, given increasing globalisation, to consider what current themes and approaches exist across jurisdictions that can enable us all to deal with disputes effectively. It is a delight to read and engage with the perspectives of these outstanding thinkers.’

Prof. Tania Sourdin, Dean and Head of School, Newcastle Law School

‘Anyone engaged in the serious study of legal dispute resolution should not only read this book, but also keep it at hand. Dispute resolution students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers—especially but not only those working across borders—will find striking insights and actionable wisdom about how to research, design, and reform effective dispute resolution systems.’

Dr. Joshua Karton, Associate Professor, Queen’s University Faculty of Law

"This pathbreaking book brings new perspectives to the study of comparative and transnational alternative dispute resolution. It promises to change the way with we understand the laws, systems, and institutions undergirding the global practice of mediation, arbitration, and other extra-judicial methods."

Dr. Zach Calo, Professor of Law, Hamad bin Khalifa University College of Law and Public Policy

Summary of the book based on this link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4344527

Shahla Ali on Transnational Commercial Law in the OUP Handbook of Transnational Law (new book chapter)

"Transnational Commercial Law"

Shahla Ali in Peer Zumbansen (ed)

OUP Handbook of Transnational Law, 

Oxford University Press

21 September 2021

Abstract: Alongside a growing recognition that the traditional territorialist theory is limited in its ability to deal with intensifying cross-border dealings, a pluralistic converging of a multiplicity of legal orders (including domestic) to ensure the efficacy of cross-border commercial law is emerging. The future development of a transnational legal order will reflect the intensifying interactions between diverse norms, laws, actors and institutions – mirroring not necessarily the end of the nation state - but requiring a wider loyalty beyond nation state. To understand these dynamics, this chapter will explore developments in the field of transnational arbitration by examining the evolution of relevant substantive commercial laws and procedure, key forces including global soft law-making bodies, relevant actors including the nation state, arbitrators, parties and institutions, and relevant norms and governance processes influencing the continued evolution of transnational arbitration...  Click here to read a manuscript version of the book chapter.

Daniel Matthews on Reframing Sovereignty for the Anthropocene (Transnational Legal Theory)

"Reframing sovereignty for the anthropocene"
Daniel Matthews 
Transnational Legal Theory

Published on 20 May 2021

Abstract: Writing on sovereignty has failed to address the challenges associated with planetary climatic change. As debates about the nature of sovereignty return to the fore, there remains little attention paid to how our newly unstable environmental conditions might call for sovereignty to be imagined anew. Drawing on Neil Walker’s account of the ‘sovereignty frame’–as a means of understanding the enduring relevance of sovereignty for contemporary law and politics – this article understands sovereignty as an aesthetic device which constitutively inures political subjects to the ecological forces and relations central to the climate crisis and the broader challenges associated with the Anthropocene. In taking up the task of reframing sovereignty in a way that properly attends to these issues, this article introduces how sovereignty’s spaces, subjects and modes of governance might be reimagined in light of the Anthropocene thesis and the various disruptions it heralds for social life.

HKU Law Welcomes First Global Academic Fellow of 2020/21

Welcome to Dr Chris Szabla, the first of three Global Academic Fellows in the second round. The fellows were selected following a global competition of accomplished postdoctoral law applicants. 

     Dr Szabla researches in the areas of international, comparative, and transnational law and legal history, with a focus on borders and migration. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and an MA and PhD from Cornell University, where he taught history and international law and completed a dissertation examining the international law and global governance of migration from the nineteenth century to the present. At HKU he plans to extend his research on contemporary borders, including investigating the legal entanglements of immigration preclearance facilities and the use of surveillance technologies at borders. He also plans to begin a new historical research project focused on the development of transnational norms of border governance in colonial Asia, investigating the influence of local innovations and common commercial pressures. 

      Dr Szabla's research has attracted sponsorship from organisations including the Social Science Research Council, the Council for European Studies, and the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies, and has been recognised by the American Association of Law Libraries. His scholarship includes work focused on, inter alia, the reform of global migration governance, the place of migration in the international law of development, decolonisation in the history of global migration governance, the intellectual history of free movement, and the international law of armed conflict. He has also organised international scholarly collaborations focused on law and migration. Prior to his academic career he worked as an attorney in New York, and has studied and/or lived in Berlin, Geneva, Paris, London, and in Cairo, where he also provided legal assistance to refugees.

Emily Lee & Eric Ip on Judicial Diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific and the Singapore-initiated Transnational Judicial Insolvency Network (J Corp L Studies)

"Judicial diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific: theory and evidence from the Singapore-initiated transnational judicial insolvency network"

Emily Lee & Eric C. Ip

Journal of Corporate Law Studies 

Published online on 9 Jan 2020

Abstract: The promulgation of the Judicial Insolvency Network (JIN) Guidelines by the Supreme Court of Singapore in 2017 has triggered innovative cross-border insolvency developments in the Asia-Pacific. It is intriguing that the Guidelines were conceived not by Singaporean judges alone, but jointly with a transnational network of bankruptcy judges. This article undertakes the original contribution of examining the Guidelines in light of the overall need for participating jurisdictions to craft a transnational insolvency framework. It uses Hong Kong as a test case to illustrate trends of likely future convergence.

CL Lim on Worldwide Litigation Over Foreign Sovereign Assets (Dispute Resln Int'l)

"Worldwide Litigation Over Foreign Sovereign Assets"
CL Lim
Dispute Resolution International
Vol. 10, No. 2, October 2016

Abstract: Recent litigation about Argentina's sovereign debt workout and the enforcement of arbitral awards against foreign sovereigns has cast a spotlight on foreign sovereign immunity rules. It tells of diverse national rules of such complexity that they demand concise explanation. This brief article attempts to provide such explanation, following a panel discussion at the 2015 IBA Annual Meeting in Vienna where panellists discussed the prospects of boilerplate, catch-all contractual waiver clauses and global rule convergence. What emerged was a sense that we need to find a way out of the thicket of rules, and the unpredictability, of foreign sovereign immunity litigation. This article expands on remarks originally made in Vienna, and contends that neither boilerplate contractual text nor global convergence are likely to offer wholly satisfactory solutions, and illustrates this with examples and explains some of the hidden strengths of our current practices.

HKU Law Faculty Comment on Recent Criminal Deportation Cases Connected to Taiwan (SCMP)

"Beijing has 'legal right' to demand Kenya deport Taiwanese fraud suspects"
Catherine Wong & Lawrence Chung
South China Morning Post
15 April 2016

Beijing had legal grounds to ask Kenyan authorities to deport Taiwanese fraud suspects to the mainland, legal experts say, but it could have avoided controversy over its handling of the affair by showing more respect and better communication with Taipei.

      Forty-five Taiwanese, together with 32 mainlanders in Kenya, were sent to the mainland as authorities investigate their alleged ­involvement in phone scams targeting victims on the mainland.

     The deportations attracted criticism, though legal ­experts said Beijing’s handling of the case was supported by international laws...“Kenya and China, both of which are parties of the Palermo Convention, have the obligation to cooperate in [transnational] organised crime,” said Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. “On the other hand, there is no extradition agreement between Taiwan and Kenya.” The Palermo accord was adopted by the United Nations in 2000 with the aim of promoting cross-border cooperation in tackling organised crime... Click here to read the full article.

"Taiwan hopes for more formal crime-fighting measures with Hong Kong but city's legal scholars see hurdles"

KC Ng, Owen Fung & Samuel Chan

South China Morning Post

16 April 2016

Taiwan authorities expressed hope over establishing a formal crime-fighting mechanism with Hong Kong following the recent transfer of three suspects in the body-in-cement murder case from the island to the city. 

    Legal scholars in Hong Kong, however, had differing views on how likely such a system could be implemented, while a well-placed Taiwan official told the Post that Hong Kong’s lukewarm response to the idea thus far was a far cry from the close relations the respective law enforcement agencies had prior to the city’s 1997 handover. On Thursday, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said the island wanted to establish closer joint crime-fighting efforts with Hong Kong, including signing a mutual legal assistance agreement... The establishment of mutual legal assistance between Hong Kong and Taiwan would require Beijing’s authorisation, according to Simon Young, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. 

     Young said he believed there were many reasons the central government would support such a formal arrangement, citing a criminal cooperation agreement between the mainland and Taiwan that was implemented in 2009 and had been successful.“I think it is in everyone’s interest to try to negotiate a workable cooperation framework between the mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan,” he said. 

    But the legal scholar noted there could be some difficulties in working out a cooperation framework as Taiwan employs the death penalty while Hong Kong does not. 

     Albert Chen Hung-yee, another legal professor at HKU, was less optimistic. Chen said while it would be best for the city to establish an extradition arrangement with Taiwan, such a move would be unlikely. “Even between Hong Kong and the mainland, there is no formal extradition arrangement, so establishing one with Taiwan would be quite difficult,” he said.  Click here to read full article.

Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law 2016 (HKU-Duke)

Every summer 50-60 law students from around the world study transnational law at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong (HKU) in a summer institute established in 1995 between Duke University and HKU.  From June 26 to July 26, 2016, students will have the opportunity to study courses on (i) comparative election law, (ii) cultural heritage and environmental law, (iii) entrepreneurship and the law, (iv) FinTech: legal issues and the new paradigm in financial services; (v) introduction to American law; and (vi) introduction to law and development, taught by distinguished local and international scholars.  Applications are now being accepted for the 2016 programme.  For more information about the programme, click here.  The HKU Co-Directors of the Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law are Douglas Arner and Simon Young.