No. 161 中国，法律与外国人：国际舞台上的相互交往 (更新版本) Transcript of Remarks: "China, Law, and the Foreigner: Mutual Engagements on a Global Stage"

Tsinghua University Law School, its Research Center for Philosophy of Law and Politics, the Taing hua Modern Law Research Center, and the China Law Review jointly sponsored a Conference, "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law." The conference was organized by Professor Xu Zhangrun and Professor Chen Xinyu, Tsinghua University School of Law. Conference Program HERE.

I delivered remarks--"China, Law, and the Foreigner: Mutual Engagements on a Global Stage."  The presentation focused on the development of template for interactions between foreigners and Chinese with respect to "modernization" by the end of the Qing. Those patterns can be understood as clustered around a series of archetypes of foreign engagement and a small set of Chinese responses oscillating between opening up and shutting off. These archetypes and responses reflected the varying states of asymmetries of knowledge disparities and perceptions of need. The presentation ended with lessons to be drawn from this pattern of engagement as China assumes the role of "foreigner" within many states.

The paper will be available in a future post.

English language PowerPoints of the presentation may be accessed HERE.

中国语文 版本 访问这里

Those remarks have been transcribed in English and Chinese and posted to the Weibo microblog site of Tsinghua's San Hui Fang Society (叁會學坊) as Post 161-1 and No. 161-2. Described HERE.

This post includes the English language and 中国语文 versions of the transcript, with thanks to 叁會學坊 for permission to post.

“来华外国人与近代中国法” 国际学术研讨会 "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" International Symposium Conference Program

Tsinghua University Law School, its Research Center for Philosophy of Law and Politics, the Taing hua Modern Law Research Center, and the China Law Review jointly sponsored a Conference, "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law."  The conference was organized by Professor Xu Zhangrun and Professor Chen Xinyu, Tsinghua University School of Law.

The Conference theme focused on the contribution to the Chinese legal system and legal education of foreigners who came to China from the time of the modern era since the Qing dynasty. The discussion was structured around a set of specific questions of foreigners and modern Chinese law:

--Their contribution and morality about law and jurisprudence in China;

--The opinions about Chinese law;

--Their doctrines and writings about Chinese law, jurisprudence, and legal education;

--Their efforts to spread Western law and legal concepts in China; and 

--Within the scope of the topic, the civilizing force, forms of knowledge and political aspirations around Chinese law

 叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Society, of Tsinhua University has posted transcripts of the Conference, information about which was posted HERE. 

The Conference Program (中国语文) follows:

Introducing 叁會學坊, the San Hui Xue Fang (Workshops) of Tsinghua University

In August, Tsinghua University University Law School's Research Center for Philosophy of Law and Politics, the Taing hua Modern Law Research Center, and the China Law Review jointly sponsored a conference entitled, "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" (for information see HERE).

I delivered remarks--"China, Law, and the Foreigner: Mutual Engagements on a Global Stage." Those remarks have been transcribed in English and Chinese and posted to the Weibo microblog site of Tsinhua's San Hui Fang Society as Post 161-1 and No. 161-2. I will make the transcript available in a future post.

For this post, and to my non Chinese readers, I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce 叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Workshops, of Tsinghua University Research Center for Philosophy of Law and Politics and sponsored by the Huayu Hanyu Law Research Foundation. It's statement is provided in in English and 中国语文.

Working Towards a Treaty for Business and Human Rights--An Opportunity to Share Your Ideas; Call for Inputs by the Open Ended International Working Group

(Pix © 2014 Larry Catá Backer)

The Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations  and other business enterprises was established in the wake of a successful effort by a group of states to seek a treaty based approach to the regulation of the conduct of so-called transnational enterprises under international law. This movement toward a comprehensive treaty has  been supported by a substantial number of civil society organizations and developing states, but opposed by business and developed states which have sought to further develop the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (see, e.g., here).  I have written about this project from the perspective of a supportive skeptic (see, here, here, here, and here).

As part of its Mandate, the first two sessions of the open-ended intergovernmental working group “shall be dedicated to conducting constructive deliberations on the content, scope, nature and form of the future international instrument.” To that end, it has issued a call for written contributions relevant ot the work of the OEIGWG on possible principles, scope and elements of an international legally binding instrument.

The Mandate with links to the call for inputs follows. Current contributions already submitted may be found  here. See here for Information Note for NGOs.

The Architecture of Human Rights at the U.N.: Complexity-Coordination-Fracture

The United Nations recently released a very useful chart of the institutional organization of the U.N. institutions whose work touches on or focuses on the human rights missions  of this international organization and its coordinate parts. 

That chart is worth considering for what it tells us of the institutionalization of human rights within international public organizations that touch on complexity, fracture, fluidity, permeability, and polycentricity. 

CECC Chairs Say Trials of Rights Advocates and Religious Leader a Mockery of Justice

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues: Access to Justice; Civil Society;Commercial Rule of Law; Criminal Justice; Developments in Hong Kong and Macau ; The Environment ; Ethnic Minority Rights;Freedom of Expression; Freedom of Religion ; Freedom of Residence and Movement ; Human Trafficking ; Institutions of Democratic Governance ; North Korean Refugees in China; Population Planning ; Public Health ; Status of Women ; Tibet ; Worker Rights ; and Xinjiang.

CECC tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. 

In September 2015 during  the run up to the the state visit of Xi Jinping to the United States, the CECC announced activities that focused on its current critical line toward Chinese policies.  announcing hearings  on the recent detention of Chinese lawyers (see, e.g., HERE). That focus has been renewed ahead of the G-20 Summit. Representative Christopher H. Smith, chair, and Senator Marco Rubio, cochair, issued the following statements in response to the public confessions and trials involving human rights lawyers and religious leader Hu Shigen.  The issue is quite sensitive in China ("China has rebuked the US for criticising its convictions of human rights activists, a court this week having sentenced three rights advocates and a lawyer to up to seven and half years in jail for subversion." here). 

The issues have ramifications far beyond the trials themselves. It combines issues of internal application of its own normative framework, nationalism and fears of external subversion, while responding to substantial pressure form abroad. The nationalism and fear of subversion is particularly strong at the moment, it appears. "China kicked off trials for a group of lawyers and human rights activists Tuesday, accusing them of being part of a broad Western campaign to overthrow the one-party state by fomenting a “color revolution.”" (see, here). But it is also quite sensitive in the United States where the Chinese situation might prove useful in helping this nation understand itself better in the reflection of others.

The CECC statement follows.

New Paper Posted: Central Planning Versus Markets Marxism: Their Differences and Consequences for the International Ordering of State, Law, Politics, and Economy

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

In the 21st Century, the ideology of globalization, in its domestic and international components have served to frame the conceptual universe within which law, politics, economics and society are understood. But that ideology also masks some sometimes substantial differences in the ways in which states approach these issues from their own ideological home bases. And indeed, may ignore the way that these ideological sub structures may produce meaning substantially at variance with "common understanding" elsewhere. This is most sharply presented when considering the integration of Marxist Leninist systems within the global order. Even when Westerners are moved to consider the ideological lens through which such participation is made by Asian Marxist Leninist states, it is not taken seriously, as the lenses of pragmatism and "rational acting" along classical liberal lines displaces such analysis. That is a mistake--one which is emphasized every time Westerners misread those actors. Since the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, an additional variation of Marxist Leninist ideology--one that owes its sources to European Marxism, has again emerged, and may be influential within some quarters in Latin America and other developing states.

These emerging Marxist Leninist world views are worth studying. That is the object of a paper I have recently posted--Central Planning Versus Markets Marxism: Their Differences and Consequences for the International Ordering of State, Law,Politics, and Economy. It serves as my preliminary consideration of the emerging variations in Marxist Leninist ideologies that appear to be emerging.

  

This paper was first presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, held in Miami, Florida on July 28, 2016.  My thanks to the Conference organizers, my discussants from Cuba and the other participants.Comments and observations most gratefully welcome.

The paper may be accessed HERE.

The summary PowerPoint may be accessed HERE.

The abstract in English and Español (Castellano) follows.

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From the Conference Board: Embedding Sustainability Issues in Corporate Boards

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

Corporate sustainability has become quite fashionable of late.  It has the great benefit of fusing together issues of long term profitability, targeted projection into sectors of consumer markets (especially for higher end products), risk management and mitigation, and corporate social responsibility in a way that makes a "business" case  for reducing the traditional business subsidy from free riding the "commons." It focuses on long term consumer value, and incorporates the terminologies and viewpoints of corporate social responsibility and risk management (the later in the sense of mitigating risk--legal, social and reputational) within a business climate that increasingly tends to seek "rents" for use of "public" spaces and resources once treated as "free." The later, in the context of the business and human rights sector, also includes issues touching on constraining employer freedoms to exploit labor as a commodity consumed in the production process.  

But like other initiatives undertaken by large institutional actors with complex bureaucracies (for example, the state) and dynamic stakeholder communities (for enterprises--investors, consumers, the state, competitors, creditors and labor), enterprises have scrambled to define and develop consensus about the appropriate architecture for the exercise fo sustainability and the initiatives assigned to that category of enterprise activity. 

To that end our friends at the Conference Board  have just completed and published quite interesting data on the ways in which sustainability is being institutionalized within global business enterprises.

Matteo Tonello, the Managing Director, Corporate Leadership, recently circulated a Press Release about its latest report, Thomas Singer, The Seven Pillars of Sustainability Leadership (CB  RESEARCH REPORT R-1604-16; 2016).

A survey by The Conference Board shows executives point to board engagement on sustainability issues as a strong indicator of leadership in corporate sustainability. Yet a separate survey of 307 SEC-registered businesses shows only 36% of businesses assign responsibility for sustainability oversight to the board. However, there are significant variations by company size, as almost 68% of companies with revenues of more than $20 billion assign this responsibility to the board. Among these larger companies, sustainability oversight is most often assigned to a dedicated standing committee of the board or to an existing nominating/governance committee. Among smaller companies – those with revenues below $1 billion – sustainability oversight typically falls to the CEO or to a senior executive reporting directly to the CEO.

Download the Report HERE. The report and the full Corporate Intelligence portfolio are complimentary to members of The Conference Board. A fee may apply for non-members.

There is no consensus definition for sustainability.  This Post includes the definition of sustainability used by the Conference Board in its Report and the Executive Summary.

Socializing the Model Worker Where the State and Labor Meet--René Gómez Manzano and the View From Cuba and Central Planning Marxist Models of Labor Organization

(Pix from "El obrero cubano, un nuevo “subproducto”)

States in both Marxist and free market economies have distinct views about markets.  At their extremes, the former is suspicious and would substitute the state apparatus for virtually all market functions; the latter  is suspicious of any control and would substitute markets for virtually all public and private activity. Most states fall somewhere in the broad middle--intervening in markets through regulatory governance mechanisms in "free market" stares and substituting state direction or direct control ion "socialist" states.

The drive to control or manage markets applies not just to markets for capital and goods--it applies in equal measure to markets for labor. All states regulate their labor markets to a greater or lesser degree.  All are suspicious and regulate the forms of mass movements by labor and their interventions in economic and political life. But where the state manages labor, like other commodities that are production inputs (like capital), or as one of the means of production whose regulation are essential to ensuring the general welfare of society, it produces something of a contradiction.  That contradiction is inherent in the dual nature of labor--at once both a "thing" (and essential to economic activity) and a "person" for whose general welfare, as part of the sovereign masses for whose welfare all of this control is deployed in the first place.

But what happens when the state is the labor market?  And the State may retain  the profits from labor and distribute it in accordance with its policy? Centrally planned Marxist economies--like that in Cuba (but unlike China)--evidence a particularly hard version of this contradiction.   It was most recently evidenced in the efforts by the Cuban Communist Party to develop a new Model theory for their political economy--the 'Conceptualisation of the Cuban socio-economic socialist development model' ("Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano de desarrollo socialista") (discussed HERE), That model speak to the recognition of the motivation of the working class to work and to be efficient, as well as the erosion of socialist values (Ibid., ¶ 30 ("ha afectado la motivación para trabajar y ser eficientes, a la vez que se bserva cierta erosión de valores inherentes a nuestra sociedad")), a revolutionary consciousness (Iboid. ¶ 52) that would help establish a "revolutionary worker" willing and eager to contribute productively and efficiently as directed by central planning needs and recognizing her role  as a contributor to the functioning of a revolutionary society as an owner of the means of produciton (Ibid., ¶ 80 "de una clase obrera revolucionaria, capaz de trabajar con eficiencia y productividad en función del cumplimiento de los planes, reconociendo su papel de dueño —como parte de todo el pueblo—, de los medios fundamentales de producción"). The product would be  the existence of a system of perfected planning from the top  that is rational, agile, that is powered by by motivated workers adequately paid producing wealth for the common good (Ibid., ¶ 139).  And for people in Cuba, that suggests the contradiction between motivated workers and a paymaster state which also directs all of the means of production to its own ends. 

René Gómez Manzano is an independent journalist and critical outsider in Cuba. He has for many years reported on changed within the Cuban state and its ruling Communist Party. Educated in Havana and Moscow he began defending dissidents in 1990 and has served time in prison for his actions. He remains active in Cuba and tolerated by the state ad PPC. Amnesty International named him a prisoner of conscience in 1998 after his arrest and imprisonment in the late 1990s. He provides a view of the issue of labor and labor discipline within a centrally planned model of Marxist political economy where the state substitutes itself for markets. His essay, in Spanish, "El obrero cubano, un nuevo “subproducto”, originally published in Cubanet,  follows. 

What is Done for the Poor Among Us in the United States?; Useful Data From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Within a Cage of Normative Constraints

(Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

Starting almost 20 years ago, as I was looking at the construction of the present institutional framework for the provision of poor relief in the United States, I noted its utility for virtually all of the virtues of an industrial society, other than the alleviation of poverty (e.g., here).  True to its ancient roots in the transformation of early modern Europe (e.g., here) it was, and remains, an instrument through which social, legal, and economic forces are brought to bear to socialize the poor and to assuage the rest (e.g., here). Over the last quarter century much has changed, yet the overall dynamic has not, nor can it given the fundamental premises on which its ordering is based (see, e.g.,  here).   And there is little to suggest that its fundamental character as a means of social control will change (see, e.g., here).  Just as the European Marxists bend social, economic and political rules to produce the model revolutionary worker (e.g. here (Cuba)), so Western democracies seek to move the levers of economic, political, and legal authority, backed by tremendous efforts at setting the social discourse, to produce the model citizen as an economic, social and political actor (e.g., here).        

All of this came to mind as I read an alert from my colleague Francine Lipman at UNLV, whose work in the area are must reads.   The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is "a nonpartisan research and policy institute. We pursue federal and state policies designed both to reduce poverty and inequality and to restore fiscal responsibility in equitable and effective ways." (CBPP Mission). It has released a user-friendly overview of its state-by-state antipoverty data analysis, including information about broad and deep participation in Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). A program that has been referenced in recent national news.

The following Center on Budget and Policy Priorities announcements with links and interactive charts follows.

The Safety Net’s Impact: A State-by-State Look

Impact of the Safety Net: State Fact Sheets, Data Sources, and Calculations