Extraterritoriality of Chinese Criminal Jurisdiction: A Socio-legal Study

Description

Extraterritorial jurisdiction refers to the exercise of legal authority by a country over conduct or individuals outside its physical geographical territory. Despite assertions of extraterritorial jurisdiction becoming increasingly common in the 21st century, scholarship on extraterritorial jurisdiction has focused disproportionately on the Global North. This line of academic inquiry has largely neglected People’s Republic of China (Mainland China excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) and its endeavour to extend national laws beyond its geographic borders. Such omissions are unfortunate as China, particularly following its rise as a world leading power, has embarked on broadening the reach of its legal system as a primary means of consolidating a more assertive voice on the global stage. This project aims to comprehensively and critically examine the extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in post-2000 China, following the national Criminal Code amended in 1997 officially applying extraterritorial jurisdiction to all types of crimes, and the extent to which such stretched legal authority impacts law enforcement, regional order and crossborder security in the global context. In particular, this project will address the following questions: 1) what has engineered China’s effort to develop the extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction over the past two decades or so? 2) What are the theoretical and practical characteristics of China’s extraterritorial criminal laws and the principles on which such legal extraterritoriality is premised? 3) How have Chinese criminal laws been enforced extraterritorially and what do they divulge about the Chinese position on criminal extraterritoriality and punishment? 4) How should China and the West (mostly Western liberal democracies) strategically construct their criminal policy of engaging in legal cooperation based on their own capacity, interests, and long-term priorities? This project serves as the first investigation into legal, cultural, political and other contributing factors that have driven China’s construction of criminal extraterritoriality to bolster its increasingly assertive force at the international level. From a genealogical, comparative and socio-legal perspective, this project will make significant academic contribution to deepen our understanding of the challenges facing cross-state legal cooperation in the context of China’s extraterritorial movement. It will develop pragmatic recommendations around the future direction of domestic law, policy and practice to address and overcome the problems of this law enforcement cooperation. The project will bridge the ‘knowledge gap’ by creating cooperation mechanisms – informed by pragmatism and principle – that generate meaningful and visible practical outcomes.