CfP: 7th International Seminar--Academic Network of Latin America and the Caribbean on China /26-28 May 2025)

 

Happy to share this Call for Proposals for the  CfP: 7th International Seminar--Academic Network of Latin America and the Caribbean on China. Submission deadline is 25 January 20205.

Details follow.

A Seance in Perú and the Witch of Endor: The Readouts of the Meetings Between Messrs Biden and Xi

 

Pix credit here

3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. 4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa. 5 And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.  6 And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. 7 Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. (1 Samuel 28 (KJV))

A séance is an event with a fairly short history of inserting meaning into that word.  Around the time of the founding of the American Republic its meaning was understood as "a sitting, a session," as of a learned society, originally in French contexts, from French séance "a sitting,"(here), and ultimately from the Latin sedere "to sit". Its more popular meaning dates form the 1840s--in the sense of a "spiritualistic session in which intercourse is alleged to be held with ghosts of the dead" (here). The rituals of meetings of the factotums of States in this century might perhaps be characterized as one long séance in which all sorts of ghosts have attempted to be conjured up for the predilection of those invited to view the spectacle. Everyone understands this--real conjurers of the dead stay away from things--but the spectacle is hard to resist and is a useful markers for those involved in the performance of séance. 

Pix credit here

It is always fun to seek to conjure ghosts and apparitions (信鬼神)--even for the apparatus of the Chinese State, though one must be careful about the sort of spirit one seeks to conjure (China warns party members to stick to Marx, not 'ghosts and spirits'). Messrs Biden and Xi, along with their entourages, appeared eager to conjure the spirit of Mr Trump at the performative spectacle that was their side meeting at the 2024 annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum of its leaders that was held from 15 to 16 November 2024 (here). And yet that conjuring also required the medium of a leader quickly fading from the scene, along with his entourage, someone who was very much present in the moment, but also a bridge to another realm of reality that will explode on the global scene in January 2025. 

Beyond that, it was not clear the point other than to address the spirits outside th the séance room, and more particularly an incoming president who is not known to take instruction from other leaders kindly. The performance was likely the point, and its opportunity for the press to take something away from it for the purpose of dissemination among the masses. Perhaps an instruction delivered through his fading predecessor would be more effectively received? That is unlikely, especially when the instruction is interpreted by Mr. Trump's key advisors around these issues--the Secretary's of State and Defense, and the new national security advisor. Perhaps the object was provocation of a leader who loved to be provoked (and in that sense can be managed through well conceived provocations).  That is a gamble--the Trump Administration and its leader, version 2.0 may be quite different than that in Trump Administration version 1.0.  And the U.S. Congress is more likely to go along with Administration initiatives that require legislation this time around. Of course, this is not much of a provocation.  Nothing in the points raised was either new or otherwise hidden.  In a sense, at its most benign, it appears to be nothing more than one leader reminding the other about what is important to them. The Biden Administration has been reminded about this list, in whole or in part, since  the last version of these sorts of meetings occurred at the start of the Biden Administration in Anchorage (consequences considered here, and here). On the other hand, it is not the content but the delivery that counts in public performances like this one--that is something that both thin skinned countries are well aware of. And that, rather than the content, might be the provocation, if the Americans chose to see it that way. It seems that the "Anchorage" shoe may now have moved to the other foot; assuming the Trump shadow administration is even in a mood to listen.

All of this raises questions that cannot be answered even through a performance in which the questions themselves beg answering ("A reporter in the room asked Biden whether he has any concerns about the relationship under Trump, but he did not respond. The same reporter asked Xi whether he had any concerns about tariffs that Trump has called for, but Xi did not respond." here). Beyond that, the usual--performances for domestic audiences, projections outward to the press organs outside of China, and theater that can be leveraged within the international institutions in which China has been acquiring more experience in successfully managing--if and when it suits them. That is both banal and likely will have an infinitesimally short half life in media reporting cycles.  But people have longer memories.

 And yet, at least from the Chinese side, some important information--or at least formal and official stances--were transmitted and underscored, and that ought to have some significance.  They could not possibly be more than a transmission; great States tend not to lecture each other except as theater for consumption by others, but they do signal. Among the more important of the signals said to have been conveyed in the formal performance of text between the two sides was the 4th of 7 lessons from the term of Mr. Biden:

Fourth, it is important not to challenge red lines and paramount principles. Contradictions and differences between two major countries like China and the United States are unavoidable. But one side should not undermine the core interests of the other, let alone seek conflict or confrontation. The one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués are the political foundation of China-U.S. relations. They must be observed. The Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system, and China’s development right are four red lines for China. They must not be challenged. These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-U.S. relations. (MoFA, President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima)

That one, certainly, caught the attention of press organs--if only because they provided a handy list of specific conditions that would be more or less easy to track. The others were a bot more ethereal; with the exception of the very few spots where some movement toward joint action were announced (see eg, here, here, here, here, and here. What did not catch the media's attention was that the Americans also have strongly held core positions--and these were also expressed. Unstated were the red lines that the Americans will develop now more forcefully under the incoming administration.

Pix credit here

But even signals can lose something in its transmission--that is the nature of séance in which apparitions are the object of communication, and its medium of transmission.   Still it is worth considering the way in which the meeting was packaged for digestion by press organs and the masses who read them.  The form of that feeding, of course, were the now much expected "read outs" of high level meetings like this one. Both the Chinese and the U.S. readouts follow below: (1) An Overview of the Meeting Between Chinese and US Presidents in Lima by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson; and (2) Readout of President Joe Biden’s Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China.  As is usual for these devices, they say more about the way in which each side orders the world for consumption by others than it says about the meeting itself.  But then semiotics suggests that it is not the meeting but its perception that, for outsiders at least, is the more important, at least in the construction of the memorialization of the event. Trust, of course, is an entirely different matter.  Tricky business among the land of living ghosts and the spirits of that which may become.

"What awaits Sino-US ties in Trump 2.0 era": Opinion Essay in China Daily

 

Pix credit here

 

I was delighted to respond when the folks at the China Daily asked if I might be willing to write a short essay with some thoughts on what might lie ahead in Sino-U.S. relations.  The result, What awaits Sino-US ties in Trump 2.0 era (China Daily, 16 November 2024), now appears on line. My thanks to China Daily for providing this space to share some views on the issues of U.S.-China trade  as Mr. Trump's second term is set to begin.

The issues are of course important.  But so is the approach that one takes when considering the scope of possibilities.  Lately the elaboration of core premises in analytics has appeared to reduce much of the agency that States (and their apparatus operating within the confines of their political-economic systems) can take in their relations and in working toward the enhancement of their respective people's welfare (and with that of their respective nations).  

What has worried me on both sides has been the tendency--now sadly global--for embracing discursively and (sometimes) in application the worst case starting premises for analytics. Of course, no analsis is worth the trouble to engage in it without considering the full range of scenarios, from best to worst, and the unimaginable. But the descriptive analytics of scenario analytics is worthless without applying a risk and rewards based analytics to it. And both are less than useful in the absence of engaging in agency based (that is proactively interventionist) predictive analytics. Neither people, nor States, are inevitably floating toward some inevitable ends on micro or macro levels.  Both the dynamic nature of movement within stages of historical development, and the power of asserting agency within sometimes complex ecologies of action, suggest that least at the margins, nothing is inevitable.

In the context of U.S. China relations, all of this is especially true.  Both States, within the community of States, have the greatest scope of agency; both have responsibility not only for the safeguarding of the political-economic models (and the premises from out of which these are animated), but also for the safeguarding of the community of States with shared values over which their interactions produce responsibility for care. Both must live together in a world in which the nature of the systems of hierarchy and domination over which they will assert  great influence will take shape. Those realities--rational and consistent with their respective core economic-political premises--suggest a useful starting point for agency--building, in small ways at least, a means of learning to live together in ways that protect their respective interests but build stringer and reasonable ties between them at every level of social relaitons. That is harder than it sounds. Much of that will require a self restraint, on both sides, to avoid the creation of red lines that are unreasonable and unnecessary given realities on the ground. And it will require the development of systems of engagement in which the core of each system remains protected, and pathways toward mutual engagement are developed on a sound basis around those cores. The essay, then, considers, whether it is possible to conceive of a basis within which this is possible. If not, the alternatives are (or ought to present themselves) increasingly unpalatable, and hopefully not inevitable.

The essay, What awaits Sino-US ties in Trump 2.0 era (China Daily, 16 November 2024), follows below. It may be accessed HERE.

Draft Revisions to China's Arbitration Law Posted for Comment

 

 

The brilliant Susan Finder has recently reminded those interested of the release by the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee of draft Amendments to China's Arbitration Law (仲裁法（修订）).  She writes:

As followers of Chinese dispute resolution matters might know, the Arbitration Law draft amendments have been released by the NPC Standing Committee https://npcobserver.com/china-npc-draft-law/, the draft open for comment until December 8. I haven't seen a translation of the draft posted, unfortunately. Hu Ke, a partner of Jingtian & Gongcheng posted this article on LinkedIn, which summarizes the draft without any comments https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-new-ongoing-chinese-arbitration-law-reform-hu-ke-q4nvc/.

The Text of the Revision may be accessed HERE; the explanatory materials (NPC Observer) may be accessed here (with thanks for the links to the NPC Observer Website folks).  The Explanation follows below in the original Chinese and in a crude English translations.

Online Seminar--China Keywords: Information Sovereignty (xìnxī zhǔquán, 信息主权); Telos-Paul Piccone Institute

 

 

I am happy to pass along this announcement of another installment of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute's China "keywords" series.  This one focuses on Information Sovereignty (xìnxī zhǔquán, 信息主权).

 Each webinar in the “China Keywords” webinar series will introduce and explore a single concept essential for understanding contemporary Chinese social and political theory. The series will illuminate these concepts with an eye toward non-specialists in the West, while also addressing deep contestations of interest to experts in the field. The webinars will take place monthly, on the third Thursday of every month. Sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on upcoming webinars and other TPPI events. (here)

The seminar will take place 18 November 2024.  Registration via Eventbrite is required. Register for the webinar here!

More about the Seminar below and HERE.

 

Very Brief Thoughts on Remarks as Delivered by John Podesta at a Press Conference at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan)

 

Pix credit here

 

 In a quite remarkable, though unremarked, remarks addressed to the assembled press organs in 11 November 2024 at the Climate Change Conference (COP 29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan, John Podesta  suggested both the character of the transition from the Biden to the 2nd Trump Administration, and the nature of the sort of approaches those who will after 20 January 2025 will be in opposition will undertake. During the course of a set of remarks in which he outlined the normative principles and applied efforts of the outgoing Biden Administration, he also took the time to sketch out his sense of the antimonies between the vision and operational policies he serves and those he expects from the successor Administration of Mr. Trump.

Pix credit here

"It’s clear that the next Administration will try to take a U turn and reverse much of this progress. Of course, I am keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States has at times caused the parties of the climate regime, who have lived through a pattern of strong, engaged, effective U.S. leadership, followed by sudden disengagement after a U.S. presidential election. And I know that this disappointment is more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face grow ever more catastrophic."

"But that is the reality. In January, we will inaugurate a President whose relationship to climate change is captured by the words “hoax” and “fossil fuels”. He has vowed to dismantle our environmental safeguards— and once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement."

"This is what he has said, and we should believe him."

"The United States is a democracy. And in a democracy, the will of the people prevailed. Our administration is working with the incoming Administration to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition of power. "

"But what I want to tell you today is that while the United States federal government under Donald Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief. As President Biden said in the Rose Garden last week, setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. "(Remarks as Delivered by John Podesta Press Conference at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 29) in Baku, Azerbaijan)

Mr. Podesta  would know. He has been serving as Senior Advisor to President Biden for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation since September 2022 And in a similar role during the Obama Administration). He also served as chairman for Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign for president and as chief of staff for Mr. Clinton  during his Presidency(here). The entirety of the remarks are worth reading. They are worth reading not solely for what Mr. Podesta says, but more importantly, for the normative stance that serve as the foundations for those remarks, its principles and most importantly--from the perspective of climate change sensitive policies--for the choice of fundamental principle of what and who ought to be guiding ad leading climate sensitive policies and how that guidance and leadership ought to be undertaken.  In that sense Mr. Podesta represents the American version of an emerging orthodoxy with respect to climate sensitive policy and a further orthodoxy respecting how that policy ought to be realized (Cf.Climate-Related Disclosures: A Comparative Analysis Between Securities Frameworks in the U.S. and E.U.).

. 

Mr. Podesta's unhappiness, echoes that of the political-normative class that has been at the vanguard of shaping narrative and policy since before the start of this century, a narrative and policy orthodoxy that has been injected into mass perception through  press and academic organs. The UK's Guardian provides an excellent example of the state of thinking on the cusp of a return of Mr. Trump to the presidency:

Experts say Trump’s second term could be even more destructive, as he will be aided by an amenably conservative judiciary and armed with detailed policy blueprints such as the Project 2025 document published by the rightwing Heritage Foundation. Trump’s incoming administration is already reportedly drawing up executive orders to erase climate policies and open up protected land for ramped-up oil and gas production. “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world,” the president-elect said on Wednesday. Staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency, which was targeted the last time Trump was president, are already bracing for a mass exodus. Swaths of work done by the EPA under Biden, such as pollution rules for cars and power plants, as well as efforts to protect vulnerable communities living near industrial activity, are set to be reversed. (US climate envoy says fight against climate crisis does not end under Trump)

Mr. Podesta's warning to the global magisterium of like minded techno-bureaucracies along with the political leaders that these bureaucracies manage, expose in a quite useful way, both the boundaries of orthodoxy and the possibilities of a counter-orthodoxy (now heresy) even among those committed in some form or another to climate change sensitive policy (and consequential action). 

Those boundaries are important, but not in the useful and banal ways.  The boundaries suggest a presumption of an inevitable and unbreakable connection between an issue (sensitivity to the realities of climate change) and a specific set of objectives (minimizing, or eliminating at its limit, human contribution to climate change), and the apparatus necessary to connect issue and objective (the state, law and the techno-bureaucratic complex). That is neither unusual nor unnecessary in the current stage of the historical development of governance in social relations. But it does create a set of hard presumptions that do not invite consideration of other starting or ending points, even when these may be committed to the same objectives. The cluster of presumptions that are woven into Mr. Podesta's remarks, then, are as important for signalling allegiance to a core set of starting presumptions (structural orthodoxy) and a commitment to the regulatory class that has embraced them. That is an important element of the remarks--the description of the orthodoxy in which Mr. Podesta and the Biden Administration have been invested; one that aligns with what is meant to be an international consensus.

Yet consensus ought not to suggest identity, even among the broad groups that adhere to some variation of consensus around the core components (issue, objectives, apparatus).  Going forward, both the incoming administration and those who still adhere to the reigning orthodoxy ought to at least be sensitive to these groups.  They will, each in their own way, play a role in the movement from vanguard driven orthodoxies to a naturalization of orthodox consensus, and with it, the cluster of objectives implemented through an apparatus developed or deployed for the purpose). Four broad groups may be particularly worth noting:

But beyond orthodoxies--an inverted phenomenology in which ideology drives experience which is then interpreted in ways that affirm ideology, over and over--require an object.  And the great actors on the stages of climate change sensitivity all  appear to focus on the engines through which preferred forms of performing climate sensitivity toward even more preferred ends--public and private bureaucracies, the propaganda departments  of the great institutions (however styled in accordance with the vocabularies of distinct political-economic systems), and social collectives whether to not they are attached to great institutions, primary among them are states and the instrumentalities of state collectives. It is easiest this way--top down, "expert" driven" and designed to lead their objects toward proper attitudes and behaviors. And they will (learn to) like it.

And yet there lies the problem--the problem of the indifferent masses. It might not be unreasonable to assume that a large number of people are indifferent to issues of climate change.  There are any number of reasons.  Many people are concerned about survival, with respect to which climate issues may be at best a peripheral and long term factor.  The exception is where survival is impacted by climate change--those are the stories that are widely publicized and then consumed by vanguard forces as objects that might move forward their political projects in political and judicial bodies at every level of regulatory institutions.  Others may just not care. For those who do care these are the great object of narrative strategies, and the large body of actors whose preferences will drive compliance.  That compliance can be demanded through public regulatory structures, commands, and nudging. Or it can be driven through markets and autonomously applied individual action guided (or dialectically evolved) by social actors that may or may not be the state. 

Whether (1) one wraps climate sensitivity and shared objectives within the hierarchies, and cocoons of institutional (usually public) apparatus, or (2) manifests it through guided (or unguided) markets lead by (sort of) autonomous decision making (within the constraints and expectations of markets and its (eminently teachable) framework for valuing things), or (3) whether the object is to reject climate sensitivity in whole or in part leaving the masses to the whatever awaits (the vanguard tends to always figure out and privilege a means of self-preservation), the masses must be made to care. Some approaches to collective perception might suggest that mass perception--and its choices of caring or indifference--ought to be driven by the masses themselves.  Contemporary approaches tend to belittle that starting point, preferring instead to feed the illusion of free will , exercised only under the guidance of those who know better,  And perhaps they do. To shape perception is to shape the arena within which choice cane  be rationalized.  And the construction of the perception of the consequences of choice become the foundation for the management of inclinations toward caring or indifference. It is that to which much effort has been devoted already.  And that will continue.  What Mr. Podesta reminds us, though, is that where consensus exists only within different social collectives, and within factions of such social collectives, one moves from perception to politics. And in 2024, at least in the United States, politics has now produced a potentially great shift away from Mr.Podesta's vanguard elements to those of another, to clusters of groups fundamentally suspicious of the controlling role of the State and its instrumentalities that power 

The text of Mr. Podesta's Remarks follow below.  They may also be accessed HERE. 

Remarks by President Biden at a Veterans Day Wreath Laying Ceremony | Arlington, VA

 

Pix credit here

We're the only nation in the world, build on an idea. Every other nation is based on things like geography, ethnicity, religion. We're the only nation, the only in the world build on an idea, that ideas were all created equal. Deserve to create it equal throughout our lives. We haven't lived up to it every time. We've never walked away from it. Even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. And today, standing together to honor those Americans of dared all, risk all and given all to our nation, must say clearly, we never will give up. (Biden Live Transcript of Remarks here)

Mr. Biden delivered remarks on the commemoration of Veteran's Day. This Blog will commemorate this Day and what it represents by re-posting the text of those remarks. They follow below and may be accessed from CNN's website HERE and HERE; final cleaned up version HERE  The quoted remarks from that address appear to have been important enough to President Biden that he repeated them almost verbatim in both the Veteran's Day Address and also in  the Remarks by President Biden at the 156th National Memorial Day Observance ("America is the only country in the world founded on an idea — an idea that all people are created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout their lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that, but we’ve never, ever, ever walked away from it. Every generation, our fallen heroes have brought us closer.") .  

The transcript along with the cleaned up version posted several days after the event to the White House website also follow below

Greater China Legal History Seminar Series – ‘How to own a forest: shareholding, futures contracts, and ancestral trusts in southern China’ by Prof. Ian Miller (Online)

 

Happy to pass along the announcement of this quite intriguing upcoming presentation in the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Legal History Seminar Series. This from the organizers:

Can you own a forest? To a modern audience, this question may appear absurdly naive, but to villagers in Ming and Qing China, it was a surprisingly fraught question. First, labor was a key way to demonstrate possession, but forestry labor was far less regular than farm labor. By plowing, weeding, and reaping farmland, peasants regularly demonstrated their claims to ownership, or at least possession. But forests were planted in the space of a few years and then left to mature for several decades. How could peasants demonstrate ownership of trees that they were not managing on a day-to-day basis? Second, inheritance was a key basis for ownership claims, but ancestral forests had taboos on their use. Trees near graves, temples, wells, watercourses, and other ritually significant sites were off-limits. How could descendants claim ancestral forests without limiting their own abilities to use them productively?

To answer these questions villagers in southern China developed contractual mechanisms to both subdivide and merge forest rights and responsibilities. These included shares and other clauses used to partition forest rights and responsibilities, as well as trusts, portfolio deeds, and management contracts to combine properties for easier investment and oversight. In this talk, I will discuss the key role that forests played in the emergence of several financial instruments, including shares, futures contracts, and trusts, and the implications this has for our understanding of land ownership itself.

Information about the speaker follows below.

Review Essay: Anne Wagner: "Jean-Claude Gémar: The Pioneer and Vanguard of Jurilinguistics," in the International Journal of Legal Discourse.

Pix Credit here

I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication by the marvelous Anne Wagner of her review essay (2024) titled, "Jean-Claude Gémar: The Pioneer and Vanguard of Jurilinguistics," in the International Journal of Legal Discourse. This work celebrates Gémar's foundational contributions to jurilinguistics, recognizing his pivotal role in shaping this field and advancing our understanding of the complexities involved in legal translation across different legal traditions:

It may be accessed here: Wagner, Anne. "Jean-Claude Gémar: the pioneer and vanguard of jurilinguistics" International Journal of Legal Discourse, 2024. Jean-Claude gémar: the pioneer and vanguard of jurilinguistics.

A taste from teh beginning of the review essay follows below.

Panel: "Moutains Beyond Mountains: The Challenges for Non-State Actors to Contribute to Climate Givernance" 15 January 2025 (Hybrid & In Person)

 

Well worth the time if you are able to attend either in person or via Zoom.

 This panel will explore issues surrounding the role of non-state actors in the fight against climate change. The movement from state-centred regulation towards sub-national / local or transnational governance behoves us to de-construct and re-construct our understandings of the role of the state versus those outside the state such as corporations, NGOs and private landholders.

REGISTER HERE: https://machformext.osgoode.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=407128