Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2010
As a growing power, China is confronted with many challenges that include the revision of its erstwhile philosophies so as to better adapt itself to globalization and the contemporary international legal order. This article analyzes the close relationship between China’s attitude to international law and Chinese philosophy. It aims to help people to understand China’s behaviour on the global plane and the steps China is taking to integrate more seamlessly into the international legal order.
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Northwest University of Politics and Law, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China. I wish to thank Professor Rein Müllerson for supervising my research work.
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During the time of more than 100 years before the victory of Chinese revolution, the imperialist and colonist states, such as the United States, Britain, France, Imperial Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Austria, Holland, Portugal, etc., invaded China aggressively. They coerced the Chinese government into signing scores of unequal treaties, such as the 1842 Nanking Treaty, the 1858 Aigun Treaty, the 1858 Tientsin Treaty, the 1860 Peking Convention, the 1881 Yili Treaty, the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking, the 1895 Shimonoseki Treaty, the 1898 Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, the 1901 Boxer Protocol, etc. Through these unequal treaties, these states seized land in the east, west, north and south of China, and leased land in the coastal and inner China. Some of them used force to occupy Taiwan, Penghu Islands, some of them used coercion to occupy Hong Kong and lease Kowloon, and some them occupied Macao by force.
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