24 Results

Having contributed several essays on the development of China’s judiciary to the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW over the last five years, it is sobering to look back on the fate of those individuals whose plight we discussed. The sufferings of these activists tell us much about the lack of progress to establish the rule of law.
Posted December 4, 2009

The REVIEW won four certificates of special merit in the 13th annual Human Rights Press Awards, organized by Amnesty International, the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club and the Hong Kong Journalism Association. The winners were chosen from 215 entrants in various categories. We congratulate the winners in all categories. The winning REVIEW and FEER.com articles are:

In the Commentary & Analysis Category
Tibet's Legal Right to Autonomy by Paul Harris
Hu Jia in China's Legal Labyrinth by Jerome Cohen and Eva Pils

In the Online Journalism Category
Tibetans' Uncertain Future in Nepal by Mary Beth Markey
Malaysia's Authoritarian Resurgence by Richard Kraince

Posted March 21, 2009

The political uses and abuses of Taiwan’s criminal-justice system have been a topic of controversy among lawyers and legal scholars for years. Since a new government took office in Taipei in May 2008, criminal justice has come under fresh scrutiny as the government of President Ma Ying-jeou prioritizes investigations into the conduct of the previous administration.
Posted December 5, 2008

Thirty years ago, China was a legal shambles. The “antirightist” campaign of 1957-58 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 had demolished the system that the People’s Republic of China had initially imported from the Soviet Union. The country had virtually no contemporary legislation. The procuracy or public-prosecution offices and the courts had been decimated, and the Ministry of Justice abolished. The modest legal profession launched in the mid-1950s had not functioned for two decades. Legal education was only beginning to resume after a long hiatus. Experts were few and out of date. Bookstores had no law section.
Posted December 5, 2008

For more than a decade, some of the world’s top business schools have been marching into China, lured by the attraction of being in the world’s fastest growing economy and the opportunity to educate the country’s future business elite. But as with many companies that came before them, the experience has been a steep learning curve that could fill textbooks on the opaque world of doing business in China.
Posted November 7, 2008

If political scientists had to design for themselves a petri dish to examine the behavior of states in conflict, they couldn't do much better than placing India and Pakistan under the microscope. On one side of the Line of Control is a constitutionally secular republic, with the glorious messes of democracy, a nuclear arsenal and a hurrying economy. On the other side is an Islamic state, also nuclear, intermittently democratic at best, and dominated by its military. Around them, in apprehension, sits the international community, pulling what strings it has. As a laboratory, it's riveting.
Posted July 12, 2008

As the beleagured Olympic torch relay slouched toward Lhasa on June 21, Beijing readied the security forces and held its breath. Tibet Communist Party Secretary Zhang Qingli kicked off the celebrations with a thinly veiled warning to Tibetans: “We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique and safeguard the stability of Tibet … to contribute to the success of the Beijing Olympic Games.”
Posted July 4, 2008

the Beijing Number One Intermediate People’s Court convicted Hu Jia, a 34-year-old Chinese commentator and activist, of the crime of “inciting subversion of state power” through publication of five articles and two interviews. It sentenced him to three and a half years in prison and subsequent deprivation of his political rights, including that of free expression, for another year. Although Mr. Hu’s case has remained virtually unknown to the Chinese people, by the time of sentencing it had become famous worldwide. When on April 17 foreign journalists asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu about it, she gave the standard MOFA response to inquiries about political prosecutions: “The case was handled in accordance with Chinese law. China is a country under the rule of law, it abides by the law. No person is above the law and no one has a right to interfere with it.”
Posted May 2, 2008

The tiny island of Guam is at the epicenter of the United States’ plans to realign its military forces in East Asia and the Pacific. This U.S. territory—strategically located in the Western Pacific, a few hours flight time of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia—is about to undergo a transformation unlike any in the region’s recent memory. A military investment that has been projected at around $14 billion will be pumped into the island over a few short years, turbocharging its economy and swelling its population by almost a third, to 225,000, in only five years.
Posted May 2, 2008

Poor international Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. On April 25, he dropped all pretense that the Olympics are not political by hectoring the West not to hector China to honor its Olympic promises because “You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice.” The very same day, the Beijing regime bowed to international pressure to open talks with the Dalai Lama.