The social sciences as a whole in the People's Republic of China are still undergoing a process of rebuilding after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. The field of international law is no exception. Indeed, the development of internati...
The social sciences as a whole in the People's Republic of China are still undergoing a process of rebuilding after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. The field of international law is no exception. Indeed, the development of international law as an academic discipline is still at an embryonic stage in China. This late maturing can be fundamentally imputed to the nature of the de facto dependence of the Chinese academic world on the former Soviet Union in the past.
Following the Communist victory in 1949, Chinese education and scholarship in the field of international law were totally reorganized roughly along Soviet lines. Scholars and institutions of international law were deemed to be heavily influenced by Soviet theories and Marxist reorientations. Under this process, China became a paradigm case presenting the so-called 'core-periphery' problems in the academic world, i.e., Chinese inter-national law has been overwhelmingly dominated by Soviet concepts and theories.
From the critical perspective of the 'core-periphery', this article attempts to analyze how China has interpreted and established its own international law theories based upon communist theories since 1949. To do this, the article is organized as follows.
First, it analyzes thee way in which the Chinese scholars accepted Soviet theories of international law, especially the concept of 'peaceful coexistence', in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The second section focuses on the Chinese theoretical criticism directed against the Western of bourgeois international law theories. By concentrating on this issue, this part presents the state of development and trends of the Chinese international law stuies.
The third section examines why the Chinese international law studies could not help declining as a result of Sino-Soviet conflicts and the Cultural Revolution; it also provides the background to the establishment of the Chinese International Law Association.
Finally, this article closes with a brief evaluation on the lesson derived from the case of international law studies in China.