Chinese international law scholarship and its post-colonial legacy: 1979–1993

Abstract

Scholarly discourse on China’s position toward international law is not sufficiently historically informed. Whereas the legal developments of the post-Cold War era are too often depicted in an ahistorical and end-of-history-esque fashion, historical accounts predominantly draw on the era of unequal treaties to explain the supposedly reserved and formalistic Chinese position. The Maoist era and the early reform period that followed it, however, are rarely discussed. This paper criticizes this form of deep-historical extrapolation and seeks instead to reconsider the 1980s as a formative time for Chinese international law scholarship. The early reform period was both institutionally and conceptually constitutive for the professional identity of Chinese international lawyers – and its genuine internationalism prompts a reconsideration of common negative characterizations of the Chinese position. Thus, the demise of third world internationalism following the end of the Cold War leaves us not only with the question of how this post-colonial legacy continues to influence current Chinese scholarship – it also calls for a critical reevaluation of the post-Cold War international legal order at large, as well as the Chinese role in it.