Delighted to pass this long:
Please join us for the next Greater China Legal History Seminar:
Topic: The Chinese Conception of ‘Law’: a Historical Perspective
Speaker: Professor Wang Zhiqiang, Fudan University Law School
Date/Time: 16 October 2026, 12:30pm to 2:00pm (HKT)
Mode: ZOOM online seminar
Details/Registration: https://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/app/events/greater-china-legal-history-seminar-series-the-chinese-conception-of-law-a-historical-perspective-by-prof-wang-zhiqiang/
More information follows below
In the modern sense, law often refers to a coherent system of rules, a distinct branch of knowledge, a specialized professional community, and an institutionalized mechanism for resolving disputes. However, this conception of law—centered on justiciability—is not universally applicable across all cultures and historical contexts. From the perspective of social governance and normativity, this seminar provides a case study of a so-called “lawless” traditional society such as imperial China that offers new insights into the conception of law.
The seminar explores the forms of normativity that regulate people’s lives and guide their actions in China from a historical perspective, while questioning conventional understandings of the distinctive features of the Chinese legal tradition. “Heavenly Principles, National Law, Human Sentiments”—tianli, guofa, renqing—may be seen as a characteristic representation of “law” in the Chinese mind, in which these are not understood as three separate normative orders. This conception differs from the Western distinction between law and morality. Reconsidering “law” in these terms invites us to reflect critically on the modern system of law, even of social sciences, and to trace the legacy of traditional normative ideas that remains deeply embedded in Chinese legal practice today.
The seminar also warns that this does not mean romanticizing the past. The challenge, therefore, is to escape Western categories without retreating into cultural relativism. By placing different historical conceptions of law into dialogue, legal history may contribute to a more universally applicable jurisprudence.
About the speaker:
WANG Zhiqiang, Professor of Fudan University Law School. His research and teaching interests cover Chinese legal history and comparative law. He is the author of 法律多元視角下的清代國家法 [State Law in the Qing from a Perspective of Legal Pluralism] (2003; revised ed., 2017, 清代國家法：多元差異與集權統一), and the Chinese translator of The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial (by John H. Langbein). His articles and book chapters on Chinese and comparative legal history have been widely published in Chinese, English, Japanese and French. He served as the dean of Fudan Law School during 2017-2023, currently a member of the Board of Directors since the founding of the Int’l Society for Chinese Law and History in 2014, a legal advisor for Shanghai Municipality. He participated in international research projects in Kyoto University, ENS de Lyon, and Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt. He holds degrees of LL.B. and LL.M. of Fudan, Ph.D. of PKU, LL.M. and J.S.D. of Yale.
Register here to attend the seminar on or before 15 October 2026, 5:00pm (HKT).
*CPD credits are available upon application and subject to accreditation by the Law Society of Hong Kong (currently pending).
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