Why the law matters in China, with Jeremy Daum of Yale's Paul Tsai China Law Center
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2022
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at Yale University's Paul Tsai China Center. Jeremy runs ChinaLawTranslate.com, a Wiki-style resource for translations of Chinese laws and regulations and an invaluable resource not just for legal scholars but for anyone interested in understanding China's policy direction. In a wide-ranging conversation, Jeremy talks about why the law remains important despite frequent assertions that there is no rule of law in China, critiques the "techno-authoritarian" narrative on China, and offers an informed take on the much-maligned "social credit system." Jeremy's work on the social credit system has earned him a reputation as a debunker, and in this episode, he makes clear what the system is and is not.
3:28 – The ChinaLawTranslate.com project and its origins
5:21 – Why does the law matter in China?
10:09 – The technology narrative in Xinjiang
13:12 – Can the U.S. learn anything from Chinese law?
17:59 – Juvenile law and the Chinese conception of the state's role in the family
24:13 – The paternalistic conception of law and the COVID-19 response in China
28:49 – Mythbusting and the social credit system
42:21 – China's Plea Leniency System and the case for engagement in jurisprudence
A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Jeremy: The Fixer, a novel by Bernard Malamud
Kaiser: Going back to basics: Chinese stir-fry lessons on the YouTube channel "Chinese Cooking Demystified"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:15.2 | Subscribe to SubChina's daily access newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from hundreds of different |
| 0:21.0 | news sources or check out all the original writing on our site at subchina.com. We've got reported |
| 0:26.4 | stories, editorials, regular columns, as well as a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything |
| 0:33.2 | from China's fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression |
| 0:38.3 | of Uyghurs and other Muslim people in China's Xinjiang region to the tectonic shifts underway |
| 0:43.8 | as China rolls out what we are calling the Red New Deal. It's a feast of business, |
| 0:49.5 | political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor. |
| 0:56.7 | I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. My guest today is Jeremy Dom, |
| 1:02.3 | who is a senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the Paltzai China Center. |
| 1:07.9 | Ordinarily, Jeremy is based in Beijing, and he's presumably heading back, |
| 1:12.1 | like many other people, intend to, once all of this is over and China eventually reopens. |
| 1:17.5 | Meanwhile, he is hanging out and doing his important work from his U.S. home in Michigan. |
| 1:22.1 | Jeremy works on criminal procedure law, but people in the China field probably know him best for the yeoman's work that |
| 1:29.4 | he's done tirelessly for many, many years now, Chinatlautranslate.com, which he founded, I believe, |
| 1:35.7 | eight or nine years ago, and to which he is still contributing editor. It's a fantastic |
| 1:41.3 | repository of very fluent English translations of important Chinese legal |
| 1:45.7 | documents covering everything from civil and administrative law to criminal procedure law, |
| 1:50.0 | environmental law, labor law, intellectual property law, internet related law and regulations |
| 1:54.1 | and even somewhat niche areas like disability law. |
| 1:58.1 | Three years ago or so, Jeremy suddenly became a kind of go-to authority on China's |
| 2:02.7 | social credit system, challenging many of the ideas that had been popularized in media and which, |
... |
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