Summary of the 2021 Annual Conference on Global Law and Strategy

• Author: Yongle Zhang/Zhiguang Yin
• Position: Tenured Associate Professor, Peking University Law School/School of International Relations & Public Affairs of Fudan University, Professor
• Pages: 106-111

106

Summary of the 2021 Annual Conference

on Global Law and Strategy1

Yongle Zhang (Tenured Associate Professor, Peking University Law School)

Ladies and gentlemen!

This annual meeting is a forum for young and middle-aged scholars. There are 27

speeches today, involving research on imagination and governing practices in different

regions, such as the Monroe Doctrine, Pan-Turkism (“Türkülük” in Turkish), Middle East,

Indo-Pacific, Arcticism, Eurasianism, Asia Pacific, Southeast Asianism, as well as

cyberspace and the “internal frontiers”, and some scholars have discussed how

international jurisprudence relates to regional studies in method. It can be said that the

content is extremely rich, and it is difficult to summarize. I am trying to refine some clues

on a problem-conscious level.

Our conference is called Global Law and Strategy. Bringing law and strategy together

is an unusual research agenda. Law itself is a field that is prone to the Monroe Doctrine,

but in recent years, more and more legal scholars are conducting interdisciplinary research.

The reason is that this is an era of reform - the international order is undergoing profound

changes, and China is more and more deeply involved in the formulation of international

rules, but China’s ability to export rules cannot fully match the needs of practice. To “make

up for the shortcomings”, we need to “enrich the mind” for ourselves.

In what sense can this era be called the era of reform? This does not mean that the

system of rules based upon legal positivism is undergoing radical changes. Legal rules and

academic discourse are increasingly systematized and can silently hide vastly different

schemes for the distribution of benefits under seemingly indistinguishable rules. Therefore,

the “reform” will not show particularly dramatic differences at the level of rules, the key

lies in the details. International rules have the function of distributing benefits and carrying

the imagination of competing spatial orders. Therefore, we need a kind of strategic thinking,

and strive to grasp the spatial order as a whole and grasp those competing interests’

distribution schemes. For example, in the controversies between developing countries and

developed countries over the “carbon emission” scheme, fierce struggles can be seen,

involving different concepts of human rights, especially the institutional arrangements for

the right to development. Many thrilling and substantive games are implemented in the

rule-making process, which may only show some very subtle and unobtrusive differences.

China believes that only by working with other countries to liberate and develop productive

forces can she develop herself better, while some countries are trying to perpetuate their

vested interests and status by suppressing the development of other countries’ productive

forces. Therefore, to promote common development world-widely, a struggle at the level

of rules is required. Understanding this struggle requires strategic thinking and vision.

The theme of the conference was “region”, and the Institute of Area Studies of Peking

University was one of the organizers. The preparation of this conference is based on a series

of previous studies, for example, in the field of international legal history, our academic

community has been preparing for several years, and many new studies have been

1 The Summary is translated by Ziqi Sun (Hangzhou Minglang Film & TV Production Co., Ltd.) and Xiaofu

Li (Associate Editor of FLIA Review). The translations has been modified and confirmed by the speakers.