By the end of 2019, Chinese courts had uploaded some 80 million court cases to a massive, centralized database — a gold mine not only for people working in the legal professions in China, but also for researchers interested in what the court decisions can tell us about Chinese jurisprudence, criminal and civil procedures, and Chinese society more broadly. This week on Sinica, we present a show recorded back in December 2019 — prelapsarian days, before shelter-in-place orders, travel restrictions, and remote podcasting. Kaiser speaks with Rachel Stern, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law and in the UC Berkeley political science department, and with Ben Liebman, a professor of law and the director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia University. Both scholars have worked extensively with the database, and share their insights into why the Chinese government has pushed courts to upload cases to the database, and how it might transform the way that courts work in China.
7:19: What’s in the database, and how it’s unique to China
28:00: Pushing back against the techno-dystopian narrative
34:12: Creating a marketplace for legal implications
41:21: The limitations of artificial intelligence
Recommendations:
Rachel: A collection of translated essays written by Chinese intellectuals, titled Voices from the Chinese Century: Public Intellectual Debate from Contemporary China; Under Red Skies: Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China, by Karoline Kan; and the NüVoices podcast.
Ben: The works of artist Stuart Robertson.
Kaiser: The popular Chinese talk show Informal Talks (非正式会谈 fēi zhèng shì huì tán), available to watch on YouTube.
Ian Johnson on "Sparks," his new book on China's underground historians
U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA) on his new U.S.-China policy white paper
The case for the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement
The Rise and Fall of the EAST: MIT's Yasheng Huang on his new book
China Stories summer special: The best of This Week in China's HIstory
Wargaming a Taiwan invasion scenario: Lyle Goldstein on the CSIS wargame “The First Battle of the Next War"
The state of play of generative AI in China, with Paul Triolo
Is the Biden administration resetting U.S.-China relations?
The CFR Taiwan task force report: advice and dissent, with Maggie Lewis and Paul Heer
Transnational repression and China's "overseas police stations," with Jeremy Daum of Yale's Paul Tsai China Law Center
China after COVID: UPenn's Neysun Mahboubi reports on scholarly exchange in a tightening political space
China's Military-Civil Fusion program: CNAS fellow Elsa Kania on the myths and realities
Mr. Blinken goes to Beijing, with former NSC China Director Dennis Wilder
Economist Keyu Jin on her new book, "The New China Playbook"
David Ownby of ReadingtheChinaDream.com on the intellectual mood in China
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Harvard's William Kirby on China's higher education system and his book "Empires of Ideas"
Does the Capvision raid signal a crackdown on consultancies in China? The China Project's CEO Bob Guterma, formerly of Capvision, weighs in
China's draft regulations on generative AI, with Kendra Schaefer and Jeremy Daum
Xiong'an: Techno-natural utopia or authoritarian folly?
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