Maura Dykstra's 2022 monograph Uncertainty in the Empire of Routine: The Administrative Revolution of the Eighteenth-Century Qing State (Harvard Asia Center, 2022) has attracted controversy in the academic community. This paper analyses the book's use of documents from the Ba County Archive, held in the SIchuan Provincial Archive. While reviewing the monograph's arguments drawn from these materials, the paper also introduces the Ba Archives and the methodologies that may be employed to interpret them.

The omnipresence of change has been singled out as posing an important challenge to law, both in theory and in practice, throughout its history. Arguably, the most efficient method of adapting the law to constant changes is legal education. Recent changes in the global arena have added to the complexity of the expected role of future legal talents, requiring them to acquire not only a profound knowledge of local and global laws but also a variety of legal as well as non-legal skills. This article presents some of the principal challenges faced by law schools and legal education in the world of today. These challenges are then explored using the example of a new Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree programme in Chinese Law and Global Legal Studies in the English Language that will be offered by the Faculty of Law of the University of Macau in Macao, China.

In recent years, China has expanded its national weather modification programme to exploit climatic resources and adapt to climate change. The unprecedented scale of China's weather modification programmes has raised concerns over potential environmental impacts, including transboundary impacts. This article analyzes the domestic governance of weather modification in China and the extent to which this legal framework satisfies China's obligations under customary international law to minimize risks of significant transboundary harm. We find that existing arrangements do not satisfy procedural obligations under customary international law; nor do they adequately address the risks of environmental impacts associated with the increased use of weather modification. Procedures for transboundary environmental impact assessment (EIA) and engagement with regional neighbours are needed for China to comply with international law and promote stability in the region.

This article seeks to show that the frequent invocation by the Qing Board of Punishments of the adage that liu yang represents an exercise of imperial benevolence outside the law is not a mere formality without substantive meaning, but rather reflects the role played by the adage in the reasoning by which permission to remain at home to support an elderly or sick parent was granted or withheld. The Board may argue either that “benevolence” supplies a reason for a grant of liu yang in a given case or, on the contrary, that “benevolence” should not be extended to permit such a result. In addition, the article examines the role of the concepts of “pity” and “filial piety” in relation to the operation of “benevolence”.

A longstanding and contentious issue in Chinese legal history is whether women had the legal right to inherit and own property. During the Southern Song in particular, certain historical and legal sources have been interpreted by scholars in such a way as to propose that they did, at least to a limited extent, as reflected, for example, in the “daughter's half-share law” (nüzi fenfa 女子分法), which stipulated that a daughter would receive half a son's portion upon the death of both parents. The current study, through an examination of documentary sources on the inheritance rights of daughters, clarifies the historical circumstances surrounding the phenomenon, and concludes that no fundamental legal right to inherit and own property such as that enjoyed by men was intended. Rather, laws specifying the inheritance rights of women were the result of legislative measures for the protection of orphaned daughters, out of a concern to ensure that they would not be deprived of property that they would have received (for example, as dowry) had their parents not died. The Song's uniqueness lay not in the elevation of women's property rights, but rather in the implementation of explicit policies for the social good. That similar laws were not continued in the Ming and Qing did not in itself mean that the principle of protecting orphaned daughters had been abandoned, but rather that this principle would be applied through the discretionary powers of magistrates, as records of actual legal judgments demonstrate.

China's access to the World Trade Organisation has led to further opening up of its market to foreign operators. However, the influx of foreign investment has simultaneously increased the chance of conflict between Chinese consumers and foreign enterprises. In the past few years, there was an upsurge amongst consumers in China that their rights had been trampled by foreign manufacturers. Amongst all those consumers' complaints, vigorous protests were found against Toshiba Electronic Corporation. Toshiba was being accused of discriminating against Chinese consumers in payment of compensation. This article aims to evaluate the legal issues arising from Toshiba Notebook case. Those issues in Toshiba Notebook case have been addressed from an Australian legal perspective with particular reference to the major consumer legislation that is the Trade Practices Act 1974. Comments are also made on non-legal implications related to the case in question.

This article examines the recent development of mainland Chinese law and judicial practice regarding the law applicable to arbitration agreements. It identifies potential changes to mainland Chinese law and practice that may help to further develop the People's Republic of China (PRC) into a truly international-arbitration-friendly jurisdiction. It argues that in the absence of explicit statutory provisions and a consistent approach in the People's Courts to the determination of the place of arbitration and the law applicable to arbitration agreements, it is important for parties negotiating arbitration clauses with a seat in China and/or for contracts involving mainland Chinese elements to explicitly designate the place of arbitration as well as the law governing their arbitration agreements.

China underwent tremendous changes in social systems during the Republican period. Among these changes was the government's introduction into Chinese society of a new legal profession based on Western ideology. Relying mainly on Shanghai archival records, previous scholarship has suggested that, unlike the traditional litigation masters who had always been despised by the authorities, the new Chinese lawyers quickly rose to respectable social and economic status. However, the historical findings presented in the current article challenge this perception by showing that in a city with a more deeply rooted indigenous legal tradition and less influence from Western lawyers, as in Beijing, the new Chinese lawyers faced resistance from the legacy of the old legal culture that permeated the new system. For a considerable period of time after the establishment of the Republic, the people of Beijing still continued to hire unqualified, “phony” lawyers in lawsuits, and some of these phony lawyers had previously been litigation masters under the Qing dynasty. Although legal reform was instigated by the central government as a unified policy, its implementation was bound to vary in different regions according to the influence of the traditional legal culture. It is clear that the situation in Shanghai and other treaty ports does not represent the situation throughout the entire country, nor even in other coastal regions. Therefore, to make more sense of legal reform in China, one should evaluate the development of legal reform in a particular city or region against its social and ideological backdrop. This approach may provide insights not only into the legal reform of the Republican period, but also into the post-Mao era when once again a modern legal system based on the Western model has been introduced, this time within a socialist system.