On 8 September, Visiting Professor Björn Ahl, Chair of Chinese Legal Culture at the University of Cologne will give a talk on Why and How Do We Study Chinese Law in Our Times at the Faculty of Law. The event will be conducted in an informal manner to motivate discussion with participants about those very fundamental issues.

It would be great if you could join us in the discussion with Björn. Also, could you spread words to students and colleagues in your Faculty that might be interested in the issues? We are trying to attract more participants to the event and would really appreciate your kind help.

The PRC Government’s zero-Covid strategy has isolated it form the rest of the world and international students and researchers of Chinese law have lost physical access to Mainland China. Further, European perspectives on China have changed from seeing it as providing economic opportunities to constituting major economic and political risks. In particular due to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and the PRC’s position on the war, China is now more clearly seen as a revisionist power that will in the not-too-distant future integrate Taiwan into the authoritarian party-state. What are the practical and methodological implications of those developments for studying Chinese law from a European perspective? What is the impact on career opportunities for the students of Chinese law? How can we conduct meaningful research on Chinese law in the future? Those and other related questions will be addressed in the talk and the discussion with participants.