U.N. Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Offers Platform to Build Safe Systems and Open Call for Candidates

 

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 "!The United Nations tends to be a useful mirror, reflecting the current version of orthodoxy among its various stakeholders, some of whom are states, many of whom are elements of the complex ecologies of techno-functionaries who in public and private institutional organs, constitute the only global focus group worth watching. Its advisory bodies, experts and related functionaries are especially useful for inscribing the forms into which orthodoxy, translated into the law and norms of social relations, will morph." (Made in Our Own Image; Animated as Our Servant; Governed as our Property: Interim Report "Governing AI for Humanity" and Request for Feedback). 

December 2023, the UN Secretary-General's AI Advisory Body launched its Interim Report: Governing AI for Humanity. Almost a year later they brought us the Global Digital Compact.

The Global Digital Compact is a comprehensive global framework for digital cooperation and governance of artificial intelligence. Twenty years after the World Summit on the Information Society, it charts a roadmap for global digital cooperation to harness the immense potential of digital technology and close digital divides. On 22 September 2024, world leaders convened in New York for the Summit of the Future, where they adopted a Pact for the Future that includes a Global Digital Compact. (HERE).

Now comes dialogue--or better put, the launch of the launch the Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance. (Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Offers Platform to Build Safe Systems, Secretary-General Says at Launch) 

Today, we lay the corner-stones of a global AI ecosystem that can keep pace with the fastest—moving technology in human history. A system that rests on three fundamental pillars — policy, science and capacity.

The first pillar, policy. Today, we launch the Global Dialogue on AI Governance at the United Nations — the world’s principal venue for collective focus on this transformative technology. * * *  The goals of the Global Dialogue are clear: To help build safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems — grounded in international law, human rights and effective oversight; To promote interoperability between governance regimes — aligning rules, reducing barriers and boosting economic cooperation; And to encourage open innovation — including open—source tools and shared resources — accessible to all. * * * In short, this is about creating a space where governments, industry and civil society can advance common solutions together. Where innovation can thrive — guided by shared standards and common purpose. In an era of rapid disruption, policy dialogue must also be well-informed.
 
And so, the second pillar of an effective global AI system is science. The creation, within the United Nations, of the International Independent Scientific Panel on AI, represents another milestone — putting science at the centre of our efforts. Today, we are launching an open call for candidates — from all regions and disciplines — for the International Independent Scientific Panel on AI. This group of 40 experts will provide independent insights into the opportunities, risks and impacts associated with AI. The Panel will be the world’s early warning system and evidence engine — helping us separate signal from noise, and foresight from fear. Their independent assessments will inform the Global Dialogue and beyond — helping the international community anticipate emerging challenges; Make informed decisions about how to govern this unprecedented technology; And level the information playing field for policymakers worldwide.

The third AI cooperation pillar is capacity. I recently submitted a report on financing options for AI capacity building. The report sets out practical pathways to narrow the AI divide — in computing power, data, research, education, training and safety standards. It proposes innovative and blended approaches — from philanthropic capital to concessional instruments, from computing credits to shared regional centres of excellence and fellowships. Building on that, I will soon begin consultations with Member States, potential funders and partners on the establishment of a Global Fund for AI Capacity Development. (Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Offers Platform to Build Safe Systems, Secretary-General Says at Launch)

Thsi is all very nice, one can suppose. One can also suppose that much of its work, and certainly its trajectories, have already been scripted.  That assumption, at any rate, may be not unreasonable given the performances at the event announcing the Dialogue:

To begin the initiative, dozens of U.N. member nations — and a few tech companies, academics and nonprofits — spent a portion of Thursday summarizing their hopes and concerns about A.I. In short snippets, the speakers extolled the promise of the technology to cure disease, expand food production and accelerate learning. But they also identified risks including mass surveillance, the spread of misinformation, the consumption of energy resources and worsening income gaps among people and nations. (Countries Consider A.I.’s Dangers and Benefits at U.N.)

One notes variations of these themes at virtually every public facing event  framing an underlying regulatory project. That is not a bad thing, but it does suggest that the semiotics of dialogue may be more narrowly understood here as a pathway toward an anticipated (regulatory) and normative goal--one already presupposed.  "“The future will not be shaped by algorithms alone,” Annalena Baerbock, president of the U.N. General Assembly. “It will be shaped by the choices we make together.” (Countries Consider A.I.’s Dangers and Benefits at U.N.). Still one has the sense that the choices were made before the dialogue, one that is pre-shaped by the normative rivalries of the U.S. and China, or better put, by the choices both are making about how they mean to use the U.N. apparatus strategically for the advancement of their respective interests.

“We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralized control and global governance of A.I.,” Michael Kratsios, director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said on Wednesday. As the United States has pulled back, China has increased its support for global A.I. initiatives and cast itself as a champion of developing nations. Speaking on Thursday, Ma Zhaoxu, China’s executive vice minister of foreign affairs, warned that A.I. must not become “a game of the club of wealthy nations” and “tool of hegemony.” (Countries Consider A.I.’s Dangers and Benefits at U.N.; more on the U.S. current position here and here).

All of these performative acts continue to move forward a quite peculiar approach to generative intelligence in automated decision making and virtual systems.  It is one that assumes that these systems are inanimate instruments that can be bent to conform to the variety of usually highly contested human institutional objectives, values, desires, and organizational (and policy) frameworks. In the prpocess it reconstructs these systems as something that perhaps they are not--both as something greater and something less than what is being developed. 

The text of the Press Release: Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Offers Platform to Build Safe Systems, Secretary-General Says at Launch, follows below. The Open Call for Candidates may be accessed here and below.

Though, of course, one cannot help thinking that there are multiple tracks for selection. everyone with even the slightest interest ought to seriously consider submitting an application.  Oneof the most curious elements of the se4lcxtion process is the bias in favor of bubble and peer connections. In the process the selection process appears to provide an ironic example of the sorts of bias that the appointed group is supposed to worry about.  But then, perhaps the group is not meant to do that, but rather to protect the interests of the peer reinforcing groups that produce the sort of bias loops that the Committee is, at least in theory supposed to consider. For the moment, the bias of se4lection rewards "peer marker" collectors. And that bias is compounded by the choice of data markers used to replicate, in Committee forms, the "forbidden cities" of experts who might have contributed to the problem and who certainly have as great an interest in peer marker collection as in anything else. In that sense, the UN might have considered skipping this tedious process and merely develop AI enhanced analytics that can accumulate the data markers it values. That may be most appropriate in an institution the cognitive architecture of which is biased to ensure both self-replication and the protection of the normative bubbles which sustain its self-referencing normative systems.   But then, that may be the point where the objectives and goals are pre-set and the Committee is selected to connect sequenced data dots to "scientifically" get from a pot of information to the preferred "insights into the opportunities, risks and impacts associated with AI" that follow from the normative cage constricted for that purpose. 

America First as a Template for the Global: Text of the U.S. Cease-Fire Plan for Gaza

 

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Merchants orient around transaction, like  (The "Merchant" (商), the "Bureaucrat" (士) and the "Tariff War"--The Cognitive Cages of the New Apex Post-Global and the Condition of the U.S. and China in their Folie à Deux). Transaction provide the foundation for what Merchants do best--negotiate; while officials tend to prefer a more guided (controlling?) managerialism (Merchants Negotiate and Officials Manage Discretion Fueled Legal Structures--While Mexico Bargains Brazil Adopts Countermeasures).

Merchants hate conflict, unless, of course, conflict is the predicate for transactions. But transaction in conflicts, however lucrative, tends to narrow substantially a broader spectrum of activities within with transaction is possible.   

How does the phenomenologically oriented merchant-type relate to conflict? Perhaps the best answer to that is to recall the grounding source of a merchant's cognitive cage--transactions. For the warrior it is conflict and security; for the official it is order and stability, for the peasant it is the risk bearing engagement with risk controlling forces beyond the peasant's control. But for the merchant it is the transaction. And it is not just the transaction, of course, but the elaboration of an environment in which transaction is possible and may be undertaken in a framework that is, and is grounded in, transactional thinking. From the position of semiotics, the transaction is simultaneously the object (action and result), its own signification (as interaction), and its own interpretation (the aggregated interpretation of transaction as system the purpose of which is transaction). This is neither capitalism, nor Marxist-Leninist development of productive forces; it is just what it holds itself out to be--transaction. . . the action, the idea and the object.  (The text of and Reflections on "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Secures Agreement to Establish United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund" )

If for no other reason perhaps, merchants embracing the foundational reality shaping generative principle of "transaction" will seek, not peace, but cease fire--a space within which it is possible to broadly project transactions, even if, at the end the ceasefire expires and another round of transactionally fueled conflict arises again, until the next cease fire. Or perhaps put differently, peace is understood as cease fire, and cease fire is enough to attain the statius of peace, for the time that peace is possible ("President Trump is the President of Peace" Reflections on the Power of Presidential Self-Revolution (自我革命), the Republic's Social Revolution (社会革命) and the Presidential Message: "President Trump Brokers Another Historic Peace Deal"). 

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That is the essence of the dialectic of transaction in contested spaces--not to end but to extend conflict through sequentially arranged blocks of "ceasefire", punctuated by periods of conflict that can then fuel ceasefire again. The ceasefire dialectic is paid for in blood--and indeed, requires a small and steady stream of blood, managed through principles of proportionality that serve as the means by which an acceptable level of blood sacrifice is exacted as the price for cease fire, until, it is not. Semiotically, however, ceasefire perhaps represents a peculiar application of the principle of the proportionality of violence in the face of the irreconcilable  but now assessed across time--a temporally embedded proportionality, or a proportionality of time.  

That, perhaps, might be one way of approaching the Multi-Point Ceasefire plan for Gaza proposed by the Trump Administration and endorsed by the Prime Minister of Israel on 29 September. As reported by the New York Times, the elements of the Ceasefire Plan are these:

 Here is the full text of the proposal, provided by the White House.

• Gaza will be a de-radicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors.

• Gaza will be redeveloped for the benefit of the people of Gaza, who have suffered more than enough.

• If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed upon line to prepare for a hostage release. During this time, all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen until conditions are met for the complete staged withdrawal.

• Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

• Once all hostages are released, Israel will release 250 life sentence prisoners plus 1700 Gazans who were detained after Oct. 7, 2023, including all women and children detained in that context. For every Israeli hostage whose remains are released, Israel will release the remains of 15 deceased Gazans.

• Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.

• Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the Jan. 19, 2025, agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.

• Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the Jan. 19, 2025, agreement.

• Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza.

• This committee will be made up of qualified Palestinians and international experts, with oversight and supervision by a new international transitional body, the “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump, with other members and heads of State to be announced, including Former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

• This body will set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. This body will call on best international standards to create modern and efficient governance that serves the people of Gaza and is conducive to attracting investment.

• A Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by convening a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East. Many thoughtful investment proposals and exciting development ideas have been crafted by well-meaning international groups, and will be considered to synthesize the security and governance frameworks to attract and facilitate these investments that will create jobs, opportunity, and hope for future Gaza.

• A special economic zone will be established with preferred tariff and access rates to be negotiated with participating countries.

• No one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return. We will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza.

• Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally funded buy back and reintegration program all verified by the independent monitors. New Gaza will be fully committed to building a prosperous economy and to peaceful coexistence with their neighbors.

• A guarantee will be provided by regional partners to ensure that Hamas, and the factions, comply with their obligations and that New Gaza poses no threat to its neighbors or its people.

• The United States will work with Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (I.S.F.) to immediately deploy in Gaza. The I.S.F. will train and provide support to vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza, and will consult with Jordan and Egypt who have extensive experience in this field. This force will be the long-term internal security solution. The I.S.F. will work with Israel and Egypt to help secure border areas, along with newly trained Palestinian police forces. It is critical to prevent munitions from entering Gaza and to facilitate the rapid and secure flow of goods to rebuild and revitalize Gaza. A de-confliction mechanism will be agreed upon by the parties.

• Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. As the I.S.F. establishes control and stability, the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and time frames linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the I.D.F., I.S.F., the guarantors, and the United States, with the objective of a secure Gaza that no longer poses a threat to Israel, Egypt, or its citizens. Practically, the I.D.F. will progressively hand over the Gaza territory it occupies to the ISF according to an agreement they will make with the transitional authority until they are withdrawn completely from Gaza, save for a security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.

• In the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal, the above, including the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the I.D.F. to the I.S.F.

• An interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values of tolerance and peaceful coexistence to try and change mind-sets and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits that can be derived from peace.

• While Gaza redevelopment advances and when the P.A. reform program is faithfully carried out, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.

• The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence. (also listed here)

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There is nothing necessarily odd about the plan, and it reflects a variety of positions and offers of pathways to ceasefire that have been raised and rejected.  But time shave changed and perhaps this one will work, including, as it does, a modern day temporary International Mandate status for Gaza until it is "de-Hamasified" and (a much more interesting task) the apparatus of the West bank is cleaned up.  That suggests a very long road, indeed, especially for those who would prefer to see a Jew free Middle East however nicely they might dress it up, or those who would prefer the two State solution to finally die after the mortal blow it received in 2000 at the hands of the MENA belligerents and their strategists elsewhere or the status quo (a discussion from the sidelines here). President Trump also included his sense of the state of support for the initiative: Global Support for President Trump’s Bold Vision for Peace in Gaza.

What makes this most interesting is this: "Mr. Trump, speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel would have his “full backing” to eliminate the threat of Hamas if the militant group does not agree to its terms. Hamas said it was not consulted on the proposal." (here). And yet that may the essence of America First and the bordering of inclusion. One deal may breed others. And lots of deals may breed a longer peace or a more tolerable state of violence. And at its best it suggests the sort of religio-cultural clean up that may be a necessary predicate for a longer term cease fire that may, in turn, morph into something else. The challenge will be to avoid the trap of reproducing the structures of corruption and displacement that had haunted the administration of this area for some time leading to 7 October, and its aftermath. 

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"They Shoot Horses Don't They?". . . . The "Jewish Problem" in "Palestine" as Performed by the State Inmates of that Asylum of Politics

 

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A year ago the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority both thought it was in their respective best interests to perform in that seraglio reserved for states, whose harem ( حَرِيمٌ,), that place traditionally reserved in Muslim households for reserved for such wives, concubines, and female servants of political authority,  has been erected on the banks of the East River in New York.  I considered the semiotic state of the "Jewish Question" it continued to raise in my reflections on the texts of those performances (Cognitive Rifts and the Politics of Global Solidarity: The Remarks of Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu to the United Nations).

It appears that the global taste for seraglio entertainment continues unabated. This is especially the case when the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority perform, if only because it becomes a communal dance-a-thon in which all potentates gathered for the performances can themselves perform for the wider audience of press organs, who in turn are expected to package these multi-level performances into appropriated projected bits of agit prop theater. Last year the dominant theme was cognitive rifts.

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And, indeed, one might approach these conflicts as a manifestation, in physical form, of the cognitive ruptures that is manifested in conflict. The intensity of that conflict, quite violent in both cases, signifies not merely a fundamental incompatibility of perceiving the world and the role and expectations of the relationships of key actors within it, but also of the intensification of that dissonance a critical element of the character of which is the conviction that the fundamental starting points for perception are unalterable and require the obliteration of the other. Perhaps it does. But if that the case then these conflicts merely manifest in physical form the more fundamental semiotic contests on which the resolution both the Jewish and the Ukrainian question depends, one way or another.

The cognitive rift and its consequences/justification schemata in the Ukrainian context have been considered in earlier posts (eg here, here, here, here, and here). In the context of the Jewish presence in Israel (it is assumed, without much discussion, that what will be a State of Palestine must be or will be free of Jews--another cognitive baseline that might require exploration elsewhere), these fundamental cognitive rifts serve as the essence of the remarks of given by Mr. Abbas (first) and then by Mr. Netanyahu at the United Nations this week.(Cognitive Rifts and the Politics of Global Solidarity: The Remarks of Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu to the United Nations). 

This year the rift is taken for granted and it is time for the inmates to choose a side--and to do so as theatrically as possible given the constraints of the asylum they ave built for themselves. For the agit-prop this year the Palestinian Authority choose the "we are good children willing to  do as you say" theme; the Israeli's chose to do an interpretive dance around a theme inviting the participants to have sexual relations with themselves. And in the sidelines all of the usual actors, and those with rising ambitions watched from the corners of  in the (virtual) smokey dance den in the Harem and cabaled amongst themselves about the way to best deal with the naughty Jew and the now innocent Arab habituating lands in what had once been, after the Jewish Kingdom had been conquered, Pagan and then Christian Roman Palestine (nothing is simple in an area as ancient as this). Tony Blair is running around hoping to be a bureaucratic Lawrence of Arabia for Gaza, others plan for the Miami Beachification of the place, and still others, who have barely brushed off the offal stench of their own engagements with substantial population movements and territorial shifts, are busy lecturing smaller states about the evils of both.  

 

Still the speeches are worth the effort, as long as one understands them for what they are-necessary performances for bloated sacks of power too lazy or disinterested in solving a problem that by its persistence has been of substantial value to them in their own internal politics. The rest is just posturing and advancing sometimes in quite spectacular ways the personal ambitions and careers of those meddlesome individuals who are making a living out of righteousness on all sides in a context in which to meddle is a positive global virtue at least in this state of the historical development of the harem politics of global engagement. . . . . or perhaps this is our version of the Ottoman "Sultanate of Women." And that makes for great television drama: One of the performers danced to a less than full house; the other "star" danced from her own palace in exile to a full house of people whose bodies were there, at least. And for both it is the Harem, and its seraglio, rather than the actors themselves, that serve as the most important object element of this year's performance. And in this style of the agit prop of this century, it is not a close reading of the text that is as important as the snippets woven into the agit prop that is propelled from out of those performances onto the spaces of mass agitation which recursively will provide all the cover the elites need for doing what they intend--one way or another. It isn't that the dancing in the harem is unimportant, quite the reverse, but its purpose is other than what may appear on or as its text--con-text and memory clips are its foundation and instrument. And yet, what the Russians appear to have been teaching the world (again) is that the contest is as likely to be decided on the ground as in the theater designed for the avoidance of what became unavoidable. Both Presidents Abbas and Netanyahu know this, and the rest follows--including the constitution and deployment of the necessary justificatory tropes--the "bad" Jew, the freedom fighter, the hierarchy of oppression, the vectors of terror, etc. Faith may be blind but it enjoys a good performance in any form. 

 The text of both speeches follow below with links to original sources on line. 

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习近平 纵深推进全国统一大市场建设※ 习近平 [Xi Jinping, "Deepening the Construction of a National Unified Market"]

 

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建设全国统一大市场，既是攻坚战，也是持久战，各地区各部门要从政治和全局高度抓好落实。中央和地方、地方和地方、政府和企业、企业和企业都要加强协调配合，形成推进合力。[Building a unified national market is both a crucial and protracted battle. All regions and departments must implement it from a political and overall perspective. The central and local governments, local governments, governments and enterprises, and enterprises must strengthen coordination and cooperation to form a joint force for advancement.]  (习近平 纵深推进全国统一大市场建设※ 习近平 )

China's QS Theory journal have recently republished part of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s speech at the Sixth Meeting of the 20th Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission on July 1, 2025, 习近平 纵深推进全国统一大市场建设※ 习近平 [Xi Jinping, "Deepening the Construction of a National Unified Market"]. 

The excerpt is meant to provide a summary gloss of a portion of the 10 April 2022 "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Accelerating the Construction of a National Unified Market" [中共中央 国务院关于加快建设全国统一大市场的意见] a copy of which in the original Chinese and in a crude English translation, in the  shadow of the work of the recently concluded 3rd Plenum of the 10th CPC Congress on socialist modernization and high quality productivity, the core policy  premise of which was this: 建设全国统一大市场是构建新发展格局的基础支撑和内在要求。[Constructing a national unified market is the fundamental support and inherent requirement for building a new development pattern.] (中共中央 国务院关于加快建设全国统一大市场的意见). 

The value of the summary is the framework it provides for the values/objectives at the core of post 3rd Plenum objects from out of which it may be possible to assemble the way in which Chinese Marxist-Leninism now approaches the construction of and utility of a "National Unified Market". In addition, the connection between National Unified Markets and post 3rd Plenum Socialist (high quality production) modernization becomes clear as well. As well, its connection to the further development of the dual circulation economy, now more closely coordinated. "建设全国统一大市场，不仅是构建新发展格局、推动高质量发展的需要，而且是赢得国际竞争主动权的需要。我国作为全球第二大消费市场，必须把全国统一大市场建设好，增强我们从容应对风险挑战的底气。" [Building a national unified market is not only necessary for building a new development pattern and promoting high-quality development, but also for gaining the initiative in international competition. As the world's second-largest consumer market, my country must build a national unified market well to strengthen our confidence in calmly responding to risks and challenges.]

The General Secretary reduces that framework into six policy objectives , each of which represents a principle of the New Era National Unified Market: 第一，着力整治企业低价无序竞争乱象。[First, we will focus on rectifying the chaotic phenomenon of low-price, disorderly competition among enterprises. ]; 第二，着力整治政府采购招标乱象。[Second, we will focus on rectifying irregularities in government procurement and bidding.]; 第三，着力整治地方招商引资乱象。[Third, we will focus on rectifying irregularities in local investment promotion. ]; 第四，着力推动内外贸一体化发展。[Fourth, we will focus on promoting the integrated development of domestic and foreign trade.]; 第五，着力补齐法规制度短板。[Fifth, focus on filling gaps in laws and regulations. ]; 第六，着力纠治政绩观偏差。[Sixth, focus on correcting distorted views of performance. ].

The General Secretary's comments were widely reported because of its reference to neijuan (“内卷”), involution. "“内卷”重灾区，要依法依规有效治理。" ["Areas severely affected by "involution" must be effectively governed in accordance with laws and regulations."]. But the focus here is not on its use as Chinese internet slang for cut throat competition or race to the bottom or systems of increasing effort for diminishing reward. Instead, the General Secretary framed “内卷” as leveraging the self-regulatory role of industry associations to guide enterprises in improving product quality, implementing a policy of high quality and high prices, and opposing low prices and inferior quality. [更好发挥行业协会自律作用，引导企业提升产品品质，实行优质优价，反对低价劣质。]. In addition, there was a focus on eliminating "obsolete production capacity to achieve dynamic market clearance. We will implement integrated online and offline governance." [推动落后产能有序退出，实现市场动态出清。线上线下一体治理。].

With respect to government procurement, the focus was also on the delivery of inferior products, which, one might infer, serves as the core of the understanding of involution in New Era socialist modernization structures. "重点整治最低价中标、以次充好、利益勾连等突出问题。" But also in focus was the bidding process as well as complaint processes. More interesting may be the third element--one which suggested the continuing challenge for the central authorities of elaborating a national unified policy overlay for Chinese macro economic planning and its manifestation in the allocation of resources and production. "重点整治最低价中标、以次充好、利益勾连等突出问题。规范政府采购和招标投标，加强对中标结果的公平性审查，健全企业正常申诉渠道，完善投诉处理机制。" [We will formulate a nationwide unified list of local investment promotion activities, clearly defining which activities are encouraged and which are prohibited. We will establish and improve a standardized fiscal subsidy policy system. We will strengthen the disclosure of investment promotion information. We will severely punish verified violations.]

  The fourth point focused on the deeper coordination, within dual circulation principles, of internal and external markets. "畅通出口转内销路径，提高国内国际标准一致性，建设内外贸一体化综合服务平台，培育一批内外贸优质企业，开展“外贸优品中华行”活动。" ["Smooth the conversion of exports to domestic sales, improve the consistency of domestic and international standards, build an integrated service platform for domestic and foreign trade, cultivate a group of high-quality domestic and foreign trade enterprises, and launch the "Foreign Trade Premium Products Tour of China" campaign."]

The fifth point looks to the contributions of Socialist legality and rule of law to the construction of the National Unified Market. Here the emphasis is not just on law making but also on elaboration the institutional structures for their application. "持续开展规范涉企执法专项行动。健全有利于市场统一的财税体制、统计核算制度和信用体系。"["Continue to carry out special operations to standardize law enforcement involving enterprises. Improve the fiscal and taxation system, statistical accounting system, and credit system that are conducive to market unification."]. Of some interest here is the reference to social credit systems (for discussion see“Smart Regulation, Smart Society, Smart Courts, and Smart Party: The Ideology of Chinese Social Credit and its Dialectics.”).

  The last point focuses on narrative and discipline. It also redirects the  focus to the 3rd Plenum's high quality production but now not limited to the economic production at the heart of a National Unified Market but also with respect to its supervision and guidance. "完善高质量发展考核体系和干部政绩考核评价体系。" ["Improve the high-quality development assessment system and the cadre performance assessment and evaluation system."]. But also on the long troublesome issues of local protectionism and abuses of administrative discretion. 

  The full text of the document follows below in the orginal Chinese and in an English Translaiton, along with the text of the 10 April 2022 "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Accelerating the Construction of a National Unified Market" [中共中央 国务院关于加快建设全国统一大市场的意见] .

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment New Issue: Table of Contents and Free Articles

 

Delighted to pass along this announcement from Anna Grear, and Natalia Kobylarz (Editor-in-Chief and Co-Editor-in-Chief) of the publication of  Volume 16, Issue 1 of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (JHRE) which is now available in print and online formats via Elgaronline. Here is the description:

We are pleased to announce that Volume 16, Issue 1 of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (JHRE) is now available in print and online formats via Elgaronline.

This issue adopts a new editorial approach by featuring two extended ‘slow scholarship’ articles, which are intended to facilitate more in-depth scholarly engagement and critical reflection.

In the first contribution, Emily Jones critically examines the imperative of environmental protection for future generations, arguing that the future generations concept is anthropocentric in that it focuses only on human descendants. The second article, authored by Seth Epstein, Victoria Enkvist and Marianne Dahlén, explores the potential intersections between the recognition of nature’s rights and other rights-based claims, with particular attention to their influence on political struggles between local communities and central governments regarding decision-making authority.

We trust that readers will find this edition both stimulating and insightful.

From the 1st to the 2nd Trump Presidency: Compare the Text of President Trump's 2019 and 2025 Speeches to the U.N.

 

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President Trump has again journeyed to the United Nations to deliver remarks, the transcript of which may be accessed HERE (with thanks to the folks at The Rev Blog)  It was widely reported, and even more widely commented on by those already ready with their responses.  This is theater, and a very necessary one for the theatrical element of managing the masses and the narratives of power. It is also semiotics-- the speech was a necessary object--the character of which was both video and text both of which were meant to incarnate the significs of the President's policy objectives and as well the normative premises that make these both necessary and inevitable. The projection was into the realms of collective interpretation--to perform a structure of reality the premises of which deepen the logic of the textual projectiles launched in the address.

The President has done this before, in 2019 (Remarks by President Trump to the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly).  And perhaps before one ventures too deeply into the mud of an analysis that will necessarily reveal more about the analyst than about the object analyzed, it might be useful to compare the speeches. And no, in the first instance I am not about to do this for my readers. I would much prefer to offer my own reflections after one has done the work of reading these for oneself and coming away from that reading with one's own sense of its meaning--at least for them.

President Trump, of course, has his own gloss on his text:  At UN, President Trump Champions Sovereignty, Rejects Globalism. 

Today, in remarks to the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald J. Trump delivered a powerful rebuke to the destructive globalism that has fueled endless conflict and chaos around the world. During the address, President Trump was unapologetic in proclaiming American strength as he unveiled a bold vision for sovereign nations to unite against the true threats of terrorism, unchecked migration, biological warfare, and loss of cultural identity.

The full text, with the President's summary of what he thought were the high points of the 2025 speech also follows below. From a semiotic perspective he was wise to produce this summary--the people he wants to reach at the grass roots are more likely to read a page of text than to wade through the text of a 55 minute speech. 

The one thing that is worth noting, beyond a general consistency at a broad level of generality, is the great gulf between the hysterics of commentary--which see in these speeches a consumable meant to feed their own discursive objectives--and what might be a fair reading of text (even if after that reading one comes away with a deep sense either of agreement, disagreement, or indifference--the last not to be underestimated in its power) 

The text of both speeches follow in full below. My own reflections will follow in due course.

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President Trump, Executive Order Designating ANTIFA as a Domestic Terrorist Organization

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 On 22 September 2025 President Trump designated ANTIFA as a domestic terrorist organization (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization). His Administration also provided a Factsheet explaining the action (Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Designates Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization). 

The most interesting aspect of the action, not unexpected, is the definition of domestic terrorism that may be found in the Factsheet: "Antifa engages in coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws, with the goal of achieving policy objectives by coercion and intimidation – this is domestic terrorism." It will be interesting to see how far this definition will be stretched as it is used to reach other domestic organizations. 

Perhaps a sense of its breadth may be gleaned from  President Trump Isn’t Backing Down from Crushing Radical Left Violence. "Antifa’s terror is part of the trend of Radical Left violence that has permeated the nation in recent years, incited by constant lies and vicious attacks against Republicans from unhinged Democrat politicians, well-funded leftist organizations, and their allies in the media."

All three follow below and may be accessed from the original sources by following the link.  

 

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PowerPoint for Remarks: “Coding the Rule of Code Versus Rule of Law for Blockchain Debate”

 

 In an earlier post (Remarks to be Delivered at BlockchainGov International Symposium Present & Future of Blockchain Governance, Panthéon Assas--Université Paris II 26 September 2025) I provided the text of the Remarks I was delighted to have been asked to deliver at that conference.  This post includes access to the PowerPoint that hopefully will accompany those remarks.

“Coding the Rule of Code Versus Rule of Law for Blockchain Debate,” Keynote  Remarks Prepared for the Session on Rule of Code vs Rule of Law, International Symposium: BlockchainGov International Symposium; Present & Future of Blockchain Governance,  25-26 September 2025; Panthéon Assas – Université Paris II, Paris France.  

ACCESS REMARKS HERE:   BACKER_Rule_of_Code_Blockchain_2025v4; 

ACCESS PPT HERE: BACKER_Coding_Blockchain_REMARKS_9-2025 

The PPT also follow below. 

 

Just Published: Journal of Financial Regulation 11:2

 

 Delighted to pass this along:

The editors of the Journal of Financial Regulation are delighted to share the news that our latest issue 11:2 is now available online. Please visit https://academic.oup.com/jfr/issue/11/2 to access the journal’s latest issue, which includes contributions by 

--Michael Holscher, David Ignell, Morgan Lewis, and Kevin Stiroh, Climate Change and the Role of Regulatory Capital: a Stylized Framework for Policy Assessment
--Steffen Murau, Alexandru-Stefan Goghie, and Matteo Giordano, Encumbered Security? Vertical and Horizontal Repos in the Euro Area and Their Inherent Ambiguity
--Rebecca Rettig, Michael Mosier, and Katja Gilman, Genuine DeFi as Critical Infrastructure: A Conceptual Framework for Combating Illicit Finance Activity in Decentralized Finance
--Maarten Mol-Huging, The (Private Law) Legal Position of CET1 Capital Holders in EU Banking Regulation
--Judith Arnal, Two Sides of the Same Coin: Fraud Prevention and Accountability in Retail Payments
--Fabrice Demarigny and Apostolos Thomadakis, A Supervisory Efficiency Test for EU Financial Markets: Taking an Operational Approach to Integration and Oversight

 

Perspectives on Brazilian Constitutionalism: v. 46 n. 101 (2025): Seqüência - Estudos Jurídicos e Políticos

 

Delighted to pass along two quite interesting articles just published in v. 46 n. 101 (2025): Seqüência - Estudos Jurídicos e Político. The Theme is Brazilian constitutionalism.

Paulo Marcio Cruz, Marcos Fey Probst  consider the possibilities of constitutional symmetry in Brazilian federative constitutional ideology (Simetria constitucional: que federação estamos construindo?  [Constitutional Symmetry: What kind of federation are we building?]). The authors consider decades of Supreme Court opinions constructing the Brazilian form of federalism against the principle of symmetry and constitutionally necessary minimum degrees of autonomy. 

Dimitri Dimoulis, Soraya Gasparetto Lunardi cinsider the contemporary forms of the Brazilian constitutional crisis (A Constituição brasileira em crise (2015-2022): perda de substância normativa e eficácia seletiva) [The Brazilian Constitution in crisis (2015-2022): loss of normative substance and selective effectiveness)] which adds a layer to the variations of crisis in other liberal democratic constitutional systems. They suggest that from the 2015 international and economic crisis and under the leadership of Presidents Temer and Bolsonaro, the 1988 Constitution was applied to reduce its normative substance in ways that aggravated its selective effectiveness under neoliberal policies.

Both are worth reading and considering. The abstracts of both follow below in English and the original Portuguese along with links to the articles follow below.

Remarks to be Delivered at BlockchainGov International Symposium Present & Future of Blockchain Governance, Panthéon Assas--Université Paris II 26 September 2025

 

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I was delighted to have been asked to deliver brief remarks at the public conference, BlockchainGov International Symposium Present & Future of Blockchain Governance, to be held at Panthéon Assas--Université Paris II 25-26 September 2025. The conference is meant to celebrate and look back on the remarkable work of a group of excellent colleagues, organized under the code name Blockchain Gov.

As BlockchainGov enters its final year, this public symposium invites you to an experimental overview of five years of research on blockchain governance. Together, we’ll explore how concepts like legitimacy, polycentricity, alegality, and constitutionalism shape governance in decentralized systems. Each panel will open with a short BlockchainGov research presentation, followed by participatory dialogue spinning internal working group themes into public conversation.

The title of my remarks is "Coding the Rule of Code Versus Rule of Law for Blockchain Debate." Its object is to consider an underlying contradiction in the now well established parameters within which humans debate the normative elements of code based regulatory structures and their relationship (either hierarchically subordinate to, as an instrumental methodology or autonomous of) to law--understood as an object (text preserved command), as a system of human behavior management, and as the cages of the performance of the organizing premises (and their ideologies, that is the formal applied structures of human cognition) of the incarnation of human collectivity as a phenomenological set of expectations and dialogical performances. That contradiction lies at the heart of the means by which coded regulation and traditional textual (human centered) regulation are coupled.  Source coding, the human language of digitalized regulatory measure, and machine languages, the binaries and executable files arranged in a logical, temporally sequential, and iterative process, are not mirror images of the other.  They meet at the points of translation and transmission of inputs and outputs. But their logic and the way they sequence data, process, value and operations may neither align nor may they process mimesis of the kind that would advance the premise of human centered automated and tech based data driven behavior modeling and control. 

I leave the contemplation of thise issue sot the readers, and invite conversation on a small aspect of a larger problem with respect to which humans have only just begun to engage with.

An annotated version of the text of "Coding the Rule of Code Versus Rule of Law for Blockchain Debate" follows below and may be accessed HERE:   BACKER_Rule_of_Code_Blockchain_2025v4

The Program of the conference and its speakers also follow below. 

  

On National Self-Actualization in this New Era of the Historical Development of the American Republic: President Trump, Proclamation: "Constitution Week, 2025"

 

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 The history of the United States, especially since 1865, has witnessed, or perhaps it might better be said, has served as the manifestation of the framework within which the history of the Republic can be framed, of a long arc of self-actualization that, once a collective endeavor, has since the 1930s in its current forms diffused its narcotic to all actors in the nation. That diffusion has, in its own way, aligned the trajectories and voyages of personal and political self-actualization in and of the Republic. This sort of psycho-narcotic may well be useful in the presence of pain; its danger, of course is dependence, and from dependence, a substitution of the object of self actualization from the self to the satisfaction of need for the narcotic. 

The self-actualization of the Republic in, as, and through its Constitution, has a history almost as long as that of the Republic that emerged from out of the post-Revolutionary Confederation.  But that is both its genius and its challenge. It is both text that frames the possibilities and provides the language of national self-actualization; it is as well the articulation of that self-actualization in and of itself. Both are now scattered among public rituals and private speech-acts. Some of these public rituals have been memorialized in law made possible as its own manifestation--that is in rituals of national self actualization several closely tied to a prior era of self-actualization in the shadow of its challenge from Soviet Communist Internationalism. That has given the nation Congressional joint resolution of February 29, 1952 (36 U.S.C. 106), designated September 17 as “Constitution Day and Citizenship Day,” and by joint resolution of August 2, 1956 (36 U.S.C. 108), requested that the President proclaim the week beginning September 17 and ending September 23 of each year as “Constitution Week.”

And so here we are--a ritual established by Congress through proclamation, one inviting the President to provide inspirational framing of the Constitution and solidarity built around that constitutional actualization, to the nation. And like his predecessors, President Trump has complied in his Proclamation: Constitution Week, 2025, the text of which follows below. It is worth a careful read and some deeper thinking, where ever one's own pathway to political self actualization takes one. 

There are a number of strands that are worth highlighting in President Trump's text.

1. Self-Referencing Constitutional Sanctification.   President Trump follows an ancient tradition of the Republic in the embrace of constitutional sanctification. "This Constitution Week, we commit to renewing the sacred bonds of American citizenship and refortifying our storied national customs, culture, heritage, and values." (Constitution Week, 2025). What makes this more interesting is the object of sanctification: custom, tradition, culture, heritage and values. And thus the Constitution may be a sacred vessel, but what is holds is the essence of the sacred itself--and that sacred, the core of national self-actualization, is itself bounded in itself.  The constitutional sacred, then, is not the text of the vessel but what it holds--the customs and traditions of the people which ought to be manifested in the operation of the vessel itself. Thus, when President Trump writes, "we vow to honor, revere, and safeguard our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" (Constitution Week, 2025) he is referring to the constitutional sacred--customs and traditions. The Constitution and the customs and traditions for it it serves as a sacred manifestation, then, produces a closed and self-referencing system of the sacred

2. Divine Activation of the Sacred Constitutional Dialectic. The Constitution and the customs and traditions for it it serves as a sacred manifestation, then, produces dialectical space that defines the boundaries and character of the politics of the Republic.  Its norms and forms are shaped and draw from custom and tradition, etc. Its language and stability are bounded by the text of the Constitution and the operational apparatus it creates. "The Constitution established our system of Government and immortalized the cornerstone American principles of federalism, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.  Guided by these eternal truths, our Nation has been unfailingly sustained by its devotion to justice, sovereignty, and the common good of its citizens." (Constitution Week, 2025). But the self-referencing system was not self activated, even if, once started, it is self sustaining. "When our Founding Fathers gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1787, they codified the timeless truth enshrined in our Declaration of Independence — that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are granted not by government, but by God." (Constitution Week, 2025). Of course, this is a Republic with many, sometimes quite distinct, visions of the Divine and therefore of the way they approach and may hear the Divine word.  And it is always useful to remember that for some the divine may be manifested in the aggregation of the human within its divine collectivity. The Republic, then, may hear the Divine word in different tones; the expectation is that at its base those variations blend into something like a harmonious enough whole within which the Constitutional dialectic operates.  

3. The Dialectics of Obligation. The sacred dialectic is not passive.  Passivity, it is suggested, transforms a free people as the champions of their traditions (their cultural conceptual cages and the expectations that derive therefrom and thus derived are embedded in the constitutional vessel).  Instead, the dialectics functions only where all members exercise a positive duty to their own self-actualization within the boundaries of the sacred dialectic. "Our ancestors believed that the privileges of citizenship also come with obligations — including love of country, devotion to our fellow countrymen, and a steadfast commitment to preserving our inheritance of freedom." (Constitution Week, 2025). President Trump offers one vision of the core of that positive obligation.  "From the very beginning of our national story, responsible citizenship has meant obeying our laws, defending our flag, honoring our heritage, and guarding our homeland and our constitutional way of life against those who seek to destroy it — from within or without." (Constitution Week, 2025). Other may self actualize through their own manifestations and defense of tradition and custom. And the spaces between them, bounded by the limits of the sacred constitutional dialectic, is meant to produce the platform within which stability enhancing political action may be undertaken.  

Again, Constitution Day continues to serve as an important space where our elected officials may undertake their own duty to help the Nation continue to consider the critical aspects of its constitutional dialectic--the shaping of our collective and dynamic national customs, culture, heritage, and values within the architecture of our public institutions--and beyond them within the vast spaces where the people who make up this Republic may undertake to actualize these now sacred objects within the smaller spaces--that our constitutional vessel celebrates--in which their own pathways to self actualization may be realized.  And so once again it is a useful thing to heed the request now more than half a century in the making, "to educate America’s pupils on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship under our constitutional order.  In doing so, we will ensure “a more perfect Union,” will continue to prosper for generations to come" (Constitution Week, 2025) each in their own way and in solidarity with each other.

 

Upcoming Webinar: Business and Human Rights Resource Centre--"Treaty-making in troubled times: Business and Human Rights in a deregulating world" (7 October 2025)

 

 A decade, more or less, is the blink of an eye for the sausage making that is an international binding instrument, by whatever name it might its its creators to gift it. Still, even processes for international treaty making run the risk of getting stale--or worse, of missing that gloriously brief moment of relevance before time, context, and global imperatives shift. So it may be with the OEIGWG process for crafting a Business and Human Rights Treaty in a world that, in ways impossible to predict with any accuracy in 2014, is in the process of moving on. That ought to be a cause for worry. And so it may be.

I had earlier suggested some of the foundational ideological ground shifting that may be undermining the 2014 vision of the Treaty and its journey to textual realization. See here and here.  Others are considering more broadly the trajectories for human rights due diligence as law or norm. See eg here.

The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, long a friend of both the process and its normative content, has now organized what looks like an intensely interesting webinar, the first of its new series on the Business and Human Rights Treaty. 

The recent demise of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) has sent shockwaves through the Business and Human Rights (BHR) landscape. Once announced as a milestone for corporate regulation, the Directive’s collapse highlights the fragility of regional efforts in the face of political and economic pushback, and the uncertainty for victims to hold companies accountable over human rights abuses.

As the EU retrenches and some countries have seen regulatory rollbacks, the BHR community is left questioning: what’s next for corporate accountability and access to justice for victims? In this context, the UN Binding Treaty process may now carry renewed significance. Can a binding international instrument fill the regulatory vacuum left behind? Can it re-centre Global South voices that are often marginalised in domestic and regional regulatory efforts?

Our expert panel will shed light on:The current state of EU regulatory frameworks on Business and Human Rights, with a focus on EU CSDDD/Omnibus;
The limitations of Global North-led regulation;
The impacts of the deregulation trend on affected people in the Global South, and the importance of a treaty for corporate accountability and access to justice.

Confirmed panelists include:Our keynote speaker Heidi Hautala, former Member and Vice-President of the European Parliament
Ben Vanpeperstraete, Senior EU Adviser, Anti-Slavery International
Dr. Caroline Lichuma, Postdoctoral Researcher, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Prarthana Rao, Programme Manager BHR Programme, FORUM-ASIA

This has all the makings of an excellent program which one should consider attending. Link to Registration HERE.

More information below.

 

“Smart Regulation, Smart Society, Smart Courts, and Smart Party: The Ideology of Chinese Social Credit and its Dialectics.” European China Law Studies Association Annual Conference 2025, University College Cork, Cork Ireland, 20 September 2025

 

 

I am delighted to be able to participate, with a large number of my extremely talented  colleagues, in the 2025 Annual Conference of the European China Law Studies Association. It is being hosted this year at University College Dublin with great thanks to our host, Mark Poustie (Professor of Law and Dean of the School of Law), and his incredible staff. For the Conference Program here: Programme 2025 Conference

 I will be presenting my paper, “Smart Regulation, Smart Society, Smart Courts, and Smart Party: The Ideology of Chinese Social Credit and its Dialectics.”  European China Law Studies Association Annual Conference 2025, University College Cork, Cork Ireland, 20 September 2025. My object is to wrestle with the forms and consequences of tech enhanced measures operate and drive the management of human collectives in political. social, and economic spaces.  The Chinese focus on what was formally designated as social credit, and then the diffusion of the techniques of that project throughout management spaces suggests some of the challenges and opportunities, as well as the trajectories of development that one might expect to see further developed in the near term. These raise,in turn, the fundamental issue of regulatory autonomy of automated systems of governance, systems that may have been initially coded by humans but which might follow the logic of its programming in directions that humans no longer directly control. That, in turn raises the fundamental issue of investing in "smartness" through automated regulatory systems and the challenges of accountability and coordination in social spaces.

Abstract: On 31 March 2025, the Chinese authorities released what might be understood as the first major theoretical development of social credit systems since the State Council White Paper of 2014 in the form of 中共中央办公厅国务院办公厅关于健全社会信用体系的意见 [Opinions of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council on Improving the Social Credit System]. The release of the Opinion might have come as a surprise to those who had begun to envision the social credit project as increasingly narrow, technical, and embedded in traditional Chinese regulatory structures. These remarks examine social credit in the light of that Opinion and in the wider context of the much broader Chinese dialectics of new quality production as a central element of socialist modernization after the 3rd Plenum of the 20th CPC Congress. To those ends it is first necessary to take a deep dive into the 31 arch 2025 Opinion in the shadow of the development of social credit as such since 2014. One might then consider the evolution of social credit and its forward-looking aspirations in light of the core objectives of New Era socialist modernization. That requires considering the social credit project as a functionally differentiated aspect of a much broader undertaking that is meant to develop a Marxist-Leninist structure for the incorporation of tech based governance within the core political project of the CPC in its guidance and leadership role of the nation through the governing apparatus. Social credit, as smart (high quality innovative) regulation becomes a part of a larger dialectic of norms and means for perfecting the economic, social, and political order of the nation. Section 2 (Deus ex Machina) provides a historical context for social credit as a governance project and as a premise of institutional operation. That context includes a consideration of the overarching conceptual premises of smartness (Zhìnéng (智能) and Zhihuì (智慧)). Section 3 then suggests broader themes and trajectories in the Opinions around the core themes of structure (外儒内法); and norms (信). This section offers a deep dive into the Opinions. Section 4 then considers the implications of the Opinions for social credit within smart regimes. Section 5 then examines emerging regimes of smart courts (‘Zhi Hui Fa Yuan’ (智慧法院)) within these regimes of smart governance and social credit sensibilities and aspirations. Section 6 then offers brief conclusions.

 

The draft paper follows below and may be ACCESSED HERE: Backer_SmartRegulation_ECLSA2025_v2; 

 

The PPT may be ACCESSED HERE: Backer-ECLSA-2025_SmartGovt.