This article explores and compares the influence of traditional Chinese legal culture of property on contemporary Chinese societies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, who share the same legal cultural heritage but have developed different legal systems under different socio-political environment. These three jurisdictions now proclaim adherence to Westernised legal principles of private property and individual ownership. But in Confucian-dominated traditional China where family was the core societal unit, property was recognised for their collective value, and ownership was structured in network ties of relationships to preserve filial-piety-based sociomoral order. Such property practices and norms form an integral part of traditional Chinese legal culture. By examining the approaches in which customary property-holding practices have been codified, and the reasoning made by courts in parent-child property disputes, this article unveils the interpretive and adaptive ingenuity in which the three Chinese societies embrace Confucian ethos and traditional Chinese legal culture. The article suggests that the differences with the ways divergence between state-imposed systems and social norms are handled may be explained by the nature of legal systems, and that the courts of the three jurisdictions, as they apply Westernised prescripts, display similar tendency to treat belonging and kinship as central components of property.

Pandemics have a history of interrupting civilisations. From the Greeks and Romans to the British Empire, pandemics have eroded political authority and caused economic instability. The twenty-first century has been hailed as the ‘Asian century’, with China's ascent as central to a reconfiguration of global capital and power. The COVID-19 pandemic, that began in 2019 and still rages as of this writing, started in China and was exacerbated by initial repression by the local government authorities before the central government could implement appropriate disaster response. Since then, COVID-19 has been one of the most devastating pandemics in the history of globalisation. Its mortality has been coupled with regulatory responses which at times have been debilitating to national economies, no less is this true for China's own regulatory response which has been anomalous across the world. This Special Issue explores the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Chinese overseas direct investment and the concomitant forms of capital (symbolic, social, and political). It features collaborative research and writing by early career experts from throughout the world, as part of the ‘China, Law and Development’ project, based at the University of Oxford. It examines how China, its trade partners, and transnational orders have responded to the pandemic through law and regulation across an array of fields: dispute resolution, legal services, immigration law and policy, digital surveillance, global health governance, and democratic fragility.

Chinese Communist Party ideologues and a number of prominent legal scholars have become outspoken about the global significance of Chinese legal thought. The question is, however, whether the ambitious statements about the global importance of Chinese legal thought are supported by legal theoretical arguments, which could be influential abroad. This article examines the interaction between the domestic and global stages of Chinese legal speech through the tools of rhetorical theory. Arguments about the nature and global significance of Chinese law are made for different purposes and for different audiences. The most ambitious statements about the global significance of Chinese legal thought are produced within a ‘ceremonial’ genre of speech. Domestic Chinese ceremonial speech is meaningful in the Chinese context, but it translates poorly to globally influential ideological speech. Foreign audiences will find more persuasive arguments about the significance of Chinese legal thought in Chinese deliberative speech, such as parts of Chinese legal scholarship. While arguments made in the deliberative genre are more persuasive than ceremonial speech, specific argumentative moves within this genre are not always helpful for the international advocacy of Chinese legal thought. Moreover, arguments in the deliberative genre are not consistently reflected in Chinese judicial decisions. These observations highlight the role of language and persuasion in the globalisation of law.

Malaysia, being a former English colony, inherited a corpus of English law which includes equity and trusts. In recent times, major banks, financial institutions, and trust companies have reimagined the English trust in combination with Islamic law, by offering an innovation called the hibah trust. This instrument represents the Islamisation of the English trust concept where the Islamic idea of the hibah, an inter vivos gift and the English trust is combined as a wealth management offering to clients. This article explores how the hibah trust works, reasons why institutions may be offering this hybrid instrument, and potential challenges to its validity both in the civil and Syariah court.

The unprecedented global pandemic has shaken the world's foundations – upending legal institutions, toppling established principles of transnational governance, and limiting mobility between nations. In the People's Republic of China (the PRC or China), one of the most significant legal developments is the major reconfiguration of the state's labour and capital policies oriented towards its economic partners with emerging economies and economies in transition. These policies have changed dramatically, especially given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on lower-income states. China's domestic situation and its need to meet evolving transnational demands also contribute to the reformation of these economic ties, and perhaps precede further changes to be implemented in the future. To provide much-needed insight into this ongoing transformation, this Article investigates how China's labour and capital policies towards its key international partners have developed in response to the pandemic. Drawing on three case studies, we use a socio-legal approach to analyse the status of migrants from African countries in China, labour immigration to China from its southwestern border regions, and the emigration of Chinese nationals to Serbia and the Balkans for the purposes of labour and investment. Through these representative developments, this Article unveils new trends in China's post-pandemic labour and capital policies, including enhanced responsiveness; a security-centric approach to border management; and an improving regulatory approach to ordinary migration channels.

Since 1993, judges in Indian higher judiciary are appointed by a collegium of judges in the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice. Academic scholarship on judicial diversity in India has failed to address two important issues arising out of this drastic development. Firstly, while the issue of diversity in the Indian higher judiciary has received limited attention over the years, there has been no attempt to examine the composition of the Supreme Court collegium which controls appointments to the higher judiciary. Secondly, while patterns of appointments have been analysed in relation to different Chief Justices and also the collegium vis-a-vis the executive, no attention has been paid to the specific collegiums which are responsible for the selection of judges. This has allowed the members of the collegium to exercise their power away from public scrutiny.

This article unveils the group of judges who have exercised influence as members of the collegium and how this influence has been distributed amongst judges in terms of their social and professional background. Findings in this article show that membership of the collegium and influence within the collegium has not had representative diversity.

Chinese elites have celebrated its new Civil Code (2021) as the most important statute in the nation's history, and the ‘cornerstone’ of its turn toward ‘rule of law’. The Code expressly binds all persons, as well as public officials, and is judicially enforceable. The statute enshrines rights to dignity, equality, personal liberty, property, and privacy, among others, and codifies duties to protect the environment and to evolve effective means to combat sexual harassment. Echoing the German Code, the statute also contains ‘general clauses’ that enable the courts to restrict enumerated rights and entitlements for reasons of ‘good morals’, ‘public order’, and the rights of others. While constituting an act of massive delegation to the courts, judges remain prohibited from directly enforcing the PRC's Constitution. The article explores the relationship between the Code and Constitution, through a comparative analysis of: (i) the process of ‘constitutionalising’ the private law around the globe; (ii) the scholarly discourse on the ‘horizontal effect’ of rights in China; (iii) the structure of the Code itself; and (iv) the development of ‘political’ control mechanisms, to be deployed by the Communist Party of China and organs of the state to constrain how judges use their interpretive powers.

Strata titles are a critically important Australian legal export. New South Wales’ (NSW) strata legislation has been particularly influential, having been adopted in numerous jurisdictions, including Singapore in 1967. As a statutory framework, strata law solves the problem of ‘floating freeholds’ by creating indefeasible ownership of individual units in a building, guides owners in managing the development, and sets out the dispute resolution process when disagreements occur.

In an increasing number of jurisdictions (including Singapore and three states in Australia), strata legislation also enables the strata scheme to be terminated and sold for redevelopment where the requisite majority, as opposed to an unanimity of subsidiary proprietors’ consent to the sale. Strata law imposes compensation thresholds that must minimally be paid to dissenting owners. In Singapore, the rule is that no minority owner should suffer a ‘financial loss,’ while in NSW and Western Australia (WA), this amount is pegged to what the owner would theoretically have obtained had the unit been acquired compulsorily by the state. In this article, I compare strata law in Singapore, NSW, and WA in relation to compensation thresholds and explain why the Australian market value standard should also be adequate to compensate unit owners in Singapore.

Geographical Indications (GIs) have been a ‘must-have’ element for EU FTAs in the last decade. Contemporaneously, the USA has contested these EU GI provisions in its own FTAs often with the same countries. The impacts of the EU-US contestation on GIs on a third country are not sufficiently understood. China has been a long-standing example of the EU-US GI contestation. This article examines how the competing demands of EU-US GI contestation have contributed to the ‘Chinese GI Schizophrenia’, which features triplicate GI protection mechanisms coexisting simultaneously and independently. It discusses how the symptom has developed when China was navigating GI regulations bilaterally and multilaterally in the last four decades, how China has made efforts to manage this schizophrenia through institutional integration, and how recent agreements with the EU and the USA respectively further worsened the situation. Using the case of Chinese GI Schizophrenia, this article warns of similar consequences for any country signing bilateral GI agreements with both the EU and the USA: a compliance dilemma that can ultimately cast doubts on the legitimacy of GI rules and create rule complexity that can bring enormous uncertainty to agri-food producers and exporters.

This article analyses China's global health governance (GHG) practices and GHG legal infrastructure in the wake of COVID-19. It posits that China has pursued a mix of bilateral and multilateral strategies during the pandemic to promote global cooperation and domestic regulation to shape an effective GHG response. It demarcates China's proactive role in norm-setting to respond to the global health crisis. It first considers China's responses to COVID-19 and its interaction model with multilateral institutions including WHO and GAVI. It then examines China's bilateral health strategies, taking its interactions with African countries as an example, before analysing and comparing existing norms and practices on the ‘right to regulate’ under the rules of the World Trade Organisation and treaties that China participates in that call for more regulatory recognition. The article then proceeds to examine China's new initiatives in shaping GHG strategy during COVID-19. Finally, it concludes and calls for a coordinated multilateral approach to handle global health crises.

As the startup ecosystem emerges, Cambodia requires a distinct set of legal frameworks to promote many regulatory aspects to boost national innovation and strengthen the connection of key players in the ecosystem. One of them is financial support for startups, ‘Venture Capital Law’. Therefore, this paper studies the current existing legal framework of Venture Capital (VC) in Cambodia, key bottlenecks that VC encountered, comparative analysis with other countries such as the United States, Japan, and China, and then propose new regulatory frameworks which solve the key bottlenecks and aim to optimise the growth of a startup ecosystem. The finding is that different stages of VC present different bottlenecks such as fundraising (funding source), startup investment (investment readiness of the startup, and deal structure), and exit (immature the capital market for startup's IPO and lack of regulations for Merger and Acquisition (M&A)). The new regulatory frameworks should endorse the use of pension funds as a source of VC funds in the future, encourage private corporations to invest in startup causes, include regulations to promote the readiness of founders, encourage the use of convertible notes, and fasten the regulation governing M&A with the balance of antitrust law.

Online misinformation endangers the infrastructure of fact essential to public discourse and presents an even greater threat where it is being utilised as a weapon by hostile state actors. In recognition of these dangers, Singapore has implemented legal measures to combat online misinformation, enacting in quick succession the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA). These statutes open up novel frontiers of development for Singapore's free speech jurisprudence. Indeed, these statutes confer upon government authorities the power to compel the authors of certain material to display notices stating that the material contains falsehoods or originated from a hostile information campaign. Yet, should one accept that the constitutional right to freedom of speech extends to the freedom not to speak, the compulsion of such expressions may well be unconstitutional under Singapore's free speech guarantee. This article will study the theoretical justifications for a prohibition against compelled speech to evaluate whether Singapore free speech jurisprudence ought to recognise such a prohibition, propose a doctrinal framework to analyse compelled expressions by reference to US, UK, and Canadian jurisprudence, and critically assess how the POFMA and FICA would fare under such a doctrine.

The 2018 amendments to the People's Republic of China (PRC) Constitution saw the establishment of a system of supervisory commissions, which is a landmark development not only for anti-corruption, but also constitutional law in China. After providing an overview of the background and legal framework of the reform, this article discusses its constitutional implications from three perspectives. First, the reform alters the long-established state structure and creates interesting dynamics of institutional interactions among various branches of state structure. Second, it marks a reversal from the principle of ‘party-state separation’ and raises difficult issues of interface and transition between the party disciplinary system and the formal legal system. Finally, it legalises the previously extralegal practice of shuanggui (‘double specifications’) and affects the individual rights of those subject to investigation. The article concludes with some brief reflections on what this development indicates for the future of the rule of law in China, and highlights the potential for further research.

Beginning around 1990, judicial interpretation transformed public law in Sri Lanka by blending writs with fundamental rights. On the one hand, the Supreme Court has defined and expanded the constitutional right ‘to equality and equal protection of the law’ by drawing on administrative law concepts of natural justice, reasonableness, legitimate expectation, the duty to provide reasons for decision-making, and proportionality. On the other hand, judges have relied on the Bill of Rights as a standard to assess the decisions of public authorities in writ matters. This relationship between the writs and the rights has had important implications for the growth of public law in Sri Lanka. There has also emerged an incipient ground of review, ‘rights-based review’, as part of the writ jurisdiction, and the ‘public trust doctrine’ in fundamental rights review. Public law has been strengthened by the growth of public interest litigation and the use of new judicial remedies. This article looks at how the writ jurisdiction and rights-based review have evolved in recent times and considers how the two remedies have been used and fused, in a country where the legal and constitutional history has taken a different trajectory to some other post-colonial societies. The article concludes by arguing that this fusion of constitutional and administrative law concepts, together with the expansion in the rules of standing and the emergence of the new concepts of public trust doctrine and fairness, have generated a more robust legal framework that can better protect constitutional rights and democratic freedoms.

China's rising influence in parts of the developing world has raised concerns among the US and its allies. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the provision of vaccines and aid to countries in the Global South have further heightened anxieties over the potential for diffusion of China's ideals. China's investments are thought to promote the diffusion of its perspectives of rule of law and democracy, posing a challenge to the global dominance of Western liberal democratic values. Nonetheless, few studies have examined how the diffusion of China's ideals may occur through its investments and infrastructure projects in young democracies such as Malaysia whose governance and legal system significantly outperform China's according to various global indexes. This article investigates the increasing engagement with China and the reasons for this trend against the backdrop of Malaysia's legal and political institutions inherited from the West. It considers how young democracies like Malaysia are vulnerable to China's influence, intentional or unintentional, through investment. The analysis sheds light on the mechanisms that give rise to such vulnerability, exploring how the electoral system and rule of law may facilitate and amplify the impact of Chinese investment, with broader implications. Shared tacit understandings, such as the instrumentality of law and the nexus between state and business, which facilitate cross-country cooperation are also examined.

The doctrine of ‘best interests of the child’ has guided courts in determining post-divorce child custody cases in Taiwan since 1996 amendments to the Civil Code. Amended Article 1055-1 requires judges to consider factors such as ‘the age, sex, and wishes of the child’ and ‘the age, occupation, character, health condition, economic condition, and lifestyle of the parents.’ However, previous studies have not clarified which factors judges consider primary. This article collects Taiwanese family court decisions from 2012 to 2017, involving 1,126 children whose parents were both Taiwanese and who both sought to acquire custody, in which Taiwanese district courts granted sole custody to the husband or wife. The article employs decision tree methodology, a commonly used machine learning technology. The article concludes that the three most significant factors considered by Taiwanese judges are first, which parent is the child's current primary caregiver, followed by the wishes of the child and the judge's assessment of parent-child interaction. This result runs counter to widely held beliefs that parental gender and parents’ occupations and economic resources are still prime factors in judges’ contemplation. Decision tree learning, we suggest, can assist parents’ and lawyers’ case evaluations and speed up extrajudicial custody determination arrangements.