Assessing Treaty Performance in China

Trade and Human Rights

By Pitman B. Potter

SERIES: Asia Pacific Legal Culture and Globalization

UBC Press

Closer and more frequent contact among states brought about by globalization has led to an increase in trade and human rights disputes that can challenge economic relations and cloud political relationships. Preventing and managing these disputes requires a better understanding of the cross-cultural dimensions of treaty performance on trade and human rights, especially for increasingly important actors in the international system such as China.

Assessing Treaty Performance in China outlines a new approach for understanding China's treaty performance around international standards on trade and human rights, using the paradigms of selective adaptation and institutional capacity. Selective adaptation reveals how local interpretation and implementation of international treaty standards are affected by normative perspectives derived from perception, complementarity, and legitimacy. Institutional capacity explains how operational dimensions of legal performance are affected by structural and relational dynamics of institutional purpose, location, orientation, and cohesion.

The book focuses on legal performance rather than technical compliance to provide a more comprehensive perspective on China’s interaction with international treaty standards. It also offers policy suggestions for more effective engagement with China on trade and human rights issues.

This will be useful for scholars, policy makers, and private sector actors engaged with China.

RELATED TOPICS: Asian Studies, China Studies, Human Rights Law, International Law, International Politics, Law, Political Science

This is a very important, path-breaking book that does not just add to the scholarly debate in the field but takes it to a new, higher level. Meticulously researched and theoretically innovative, the book makes a substantial contribution to knowledge in its treatment of the concepts of treaty performance and State adaptation to international legal standards. Roda Mushkat, Professor of International Law, Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Johns Hopkins University

Pitman B. Potter is a professor of law and HSBC Chair in Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. He is co-editor of Globalization and Local Adaptation in International Trade Law (UBC Press, 2011).

Preface

Introduction

1 Encounters with International Trade Standards: China and the WTO

2 Performance of International Trade Standards I: Contract Law in China

3 Performance of International Trade Standards II: Property Law in China

4 Encounters with International Human Rights Standards

5 Treaty Performance on Human Rights: Sustainability and Social Justice

Conclusion

Appendices

Notes

Index

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