After Obama Visit, Legal Experts Dialogue Could Help Expand Citizens’ Rights in China (Excerpt)

• Author: Stanley Lubman

The U.S.-China Joint Statement issued at the end of President Obama’s visit to China itemized agreement on a number of items, including the decision to continue the U.S.-China Legal Experts Dialogue. Dialogue meetings, each focusing on sentence reduction and parole in the two countries, have been held on three occasions since 2005. They were conducted by the Office of Legal Affairs of the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human and Labor and senior judges of the China’s Supreme People’s Court. In my view, the list should include creation of a program to expand U.S. graduate study opportunities for Chinese legal scholars and officials; increased legal aid to Chinese citizens through legal aid centers at universities and NGOs; and increased cooperation on environmental issues.

Despite the sharp differences between Chinese and American points of view on many human rights issues, my own experience (working with The Asia Foundation on law reform projects) as well as that of others suggests that there can be fruitful exchanges on other legal issues. For example, a program funded by the US Department of Labor and conducted by American NGOs working with Chinese counterparts contributed to the process of drafting a Labor Contract Law that was adopted in 2008. Similarly, after foreign NGOS stimulated programs on government transparency and administrative law and procedure, the State Council promulgated Open Government Regulations in 2008, and China’s first provincial-level Administrative Procedure Regulation was adopted, in Hunan Province.

In planning and preparing for the next Legal Experts Dialogue, The State Department should involve American NGOs, law professors and practicing lawyers with experience in working on legal development programs in China. This was done in the Rule of Law Initiative established by President Clinton, which assisted a group of Chinese experts who drafted an administrative procedure law. Although it was not adopted, its basic concepts and ideas continue to interest Chinese law reformers.

Given the mutual agreement to continue the Legal Experts Dialogue, it is appropriate to discuss creation of a program to expand opportunities for Chinese legal scholars and officials to engage in graduate legal studies in the U.S. A prototype, the Committee on Legal Educational Exchanges in China (CLEEC), which was funded by the Ford Foundation, brought close to 300 Chinese scholars to the US for study at American law schools...