Event

China’s enactment of a Foreign Relations Law in 2023 is an important move towards legalization of China’s conduct of foreign relations. The law is a milestone in its consolidating several earlier law-making endeavors in foreign-related areas. While China’s Foreign Relations Law not likely to function the way its American counterpart does, it offers useful insights about China’s perceptions about law, foreign relations, and China’s relationship the world. Embedded in the Foreign Relations Law and its approach to legalization of foreign relations are several paradoxes which leave some important questions unanswered. This talk will critically examine the rise of foreign relations law in China and explore the underlying ideas of China’s foreign-related laws as well as their implications.

Yifeng Chen is associate professor at Peking University Law School. deputy director of the Peking University Institute of International Law, and a visiting Scholar at the Institute of Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School, in 2023-2024. He is the author of Principle of Non-intervention in Contemporary International Law (2013) and Transnational Labour Law (2023) (both in Chinese). His works in English have appeared in European Journal of International Law, Chicago Journal of International Law, Chinese Journal of International Law and other journals. Currently he is working on a book project on the ILO and the rise of industrialism. He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights and a visiting scholar to the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge, Stockholm Centre for International Law and Justice.

Open to all. This event is held onsite with a Zoom session. Please register in advance here:

https://upenn.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pc-CvrzkrG9Z3_xSWijyC7Jadjrd37Vio