Cultivating China’s Foreign-Oriented Lawyers for the Belt and Road Initiative: The case of Jiangsu Province

 Cultivating China’s Foreign-Oriented Lawyers for the Belt and Road Initiative: The case of Jiangsu Province

This article is based on a presentation given by Dr Bo Yi (associate professor of law at the Southeast University in China) at the SCLA Global Meet ‘One Belt One Road and New Opportunities’ on 31 January 2020. It was drafted by Dr Carlos Li of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the SCLA’s report on the event. For the benefit of our readers, we are now publishing it online for the first time, to help us understand and unite our changing world.

Dr Yi highlighted the fact that China can cooperate with other countries through the One Belt One Road Initiative (OBOR). In OBOR ‘Belt’ refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and ‘Road’ refers to the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Over 80 countries had signed OBOR agreements with China by January 2020, and the programme is expected to increase demand for legal services from legal institutions, education institutions, universities, and so on. Jiangsu Province aims to integrate itself into OBOR.

What is the establishment of training mechanisms for practicing lawyers in Jiangsu? In the training of an attorney, Dr Yi stated that students should not only learn domestic law but also foreign law, so that they can exchange legal theories and practices. Judges and lawyers must expand the scope of their ideas and perspectives. For instance, the Jiangsu government has recently initiated exchange study tours with the US, Australia and Singapore. The province also encourages local law schools to employ foreigners to teach English and foreign law.

In the Q&A session, an audience member proposed that it is quite challenging to train lawyers in Jiangsu province. Many problems are yet to be resolved. He said that he had recently handled a case between the governments of Pakistan and China in which he found insurmountable legal conflicts. That said, he thought there are many opportunities in the future.

 

photo by RNMitra in Canva.com

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