On 9 September 1976, Mao passed away, marking the end of the radical socialist experiment and the beginning of marketized reforms. In the face of growing social grievances sparked by marketized reforms, in the early 2000s the Hu Jintao administration (2002–2012) changed gear toward social protection. This chapter outlines the regime of general labour precarity in the post-Mao era: socialist surplus appropriation has been overhauled and given way to exploitation; the social exclusion system has been softened and recalibrated; despite efforts of decommodification, the recommodification of healthcare, education, and housing has created the ‘three new great mountains’ over Chinese people.

The rapid development of data analytics, computational power, and machine/deep learning algorithms has driven artificial intelligence (AI) applications to every sphere of society, with significant economic, legal, ethical, and political ramifications. A growing body of literature has explored critical dimensions of AI governance, yet few touch upon issue areas that directly resonate with the diverse context and dynamics of the non-Western world, particularly Asia. This chapter therefore aims to fill the gap by offering a contextual discussion of how Asian jurisdictions perceive and respond to the challenges posed by AI, as well as how they interact with each other through regulatory cross-referencing, learning, and competition. Premised upon an analysis of the diverse regulatory approaches shaped by respective political, legal, and socioeconomic contexts in such jurisdictions, this chapter identifies how Inter-Asian Law has emerged in AI governance in the forms of regulatory cross-referencing, joint efforts, and cooperation through regional forums and points to potential venues for normative interactions, dialogue, best practices exchanges, and the co-development of AI governance.

The influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the law and legal order of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region might seem not to be a case of inter-Asian law because it occurs within a single jurisdiction. Yet, Beijing has employed a wide range of means to shape Hong Kong’s legal order, ranging from making or interpreting PRC law for Hong Kong, to mandating or pressing for local lawmaking in Hong Kong, to more diffuse influences on Hong Kong’s legal order and its context. Chinese influence has made Hong Kong law less liberal and democratic and more like the PRC’s. The China–Hong Kong case shows the spectrum of modes of inter-Asian legal influence, the complexity of the relationship between transplants or exports of legal models and legal influence, and the issues that lie ahead in an era of possible competition between China and the United States/the West for legal influence.

This chapter explains how the CPC has from the beginning used its official language to stabilize its rule. During the Mao era people had to integrate this language into their everyday speech by repeatedly using “correct” words and linguistic formulae to say “correct” things. Compulsory use of the language forced everyone to propagate revolutionary values, and even when it failed to produce any matching revolutionary consciousness it completely silenced dissent. Official formulations had a powerful coercive function that stabilized party rule even when its policies were deeply unpopular. The party still uses official language to structure official discourses that outline the party’s vision, promote its policies, praise its leadership, claim the credit for China’s rise, and assert that it alone can guarantee the country’s future success. These discourses are pervasive, and they provide an overarching ideological framework that unofficial discourses are not permitted to contest. China may no longer be totalitarian, but the party’s strategic deployment of its official language is central to its success in creating a hegemonic political culture.

Given the CCP’s tight control over labour resistance, in everyday life workers in the post-Mao era rely mainly on pro-labour laws to protect their rights. This chapter focuses on under-studied agency workers, the dominant form of precarious labour in urban enterprises since the 2010s, and the regulations against the abuse of agency workers. It explains how the dualism between formal contract workers and agency workers took shape by examining the origins and expansion of agency workers. Moreover, it demonstrates why legal counter-movements in the post-Mao era are incomplete from a Polanyian perspective by examining the effects of the Labour Contract Law and the Interim Provisions on Labour Dispatch, two pro-labour regulations with a focus on agency workers.

This chapter examines the impacts of cumulative changes since 1949 on workers. As state-owned enterprises and export-oriented factories are large users of agency workers, this chapter presents a case study of both formal and agency workers in a large state-owned enterprise with relatively stable orders, and accounts of agency workers in export-oriented factories, with relatively fluctuating orders. It thus covers the two major types of agency workers in China in the 2010s: one with job tenure of years and managed solely by user enterprises, and another one with job tenure of six months or less and managed by both user enterprises and labour dispatch agencies.

This chapter asks whether there is anything we might productively characterize as an Inter-Asian approach to religion–state relations. I use the example of the Essential Religious Practices (ERP) Doctrine as a window into this analysis. The ERP Doctrine offers the best-case argument for the existence of an Inter-Asian approach to religion–state relations because, after its initial articulation by the Indian Supreme Court, it has been widely influential within South and Southeast Asia. I use two of the contexts where ERP analysis has been influential – Malaysia and Sri Lanka – to show how there has indeed been significant conceptual migration within Asia with regard to religious freedom jurisprudence. The ERP Doctrine’s travels are clearly reflected in the flow of jurisprudential ideas and via robust campus-court exchanges. At the same time, differences in the theoretical networks and sociopolitical contexts within which the ERP Doctrine has traveled prevent it from constituting a homogenous and hermetically sealed Inter-Asian approach.

A key source of CPC power is its control of the armed forces, which it can mobilize not just for national defence but also to preserve the regime. This chapter examines the CPC’s evolving relationship with its military wing – the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In previous decades the PLA has enjoyed a high degree of autonomy from the CPC’s civilian leaders. The Central Military Commission (CMC), which oversees the armed forces, has maintained a status commensurate with the Politburo, partly as a result of the fragmentation of control mechanisms. Since coming to power Xi Jinping has worked to bring the armed forces under his direct authority, but it remains unclear the extent to which direct control mechanisms can be institutionalized. This chapter examines the new features of CPC–PLA relations in the Xi era.

China’s development under the Chinese Communist Party’s rule challenges the conventional understanding of the correlation between wealth and democracy that the more well-to-do a society, the more likely it will democratize and business owners will be driving such political changes. Despite the unprecedent growth and prosperity over the past decades, the authoritarian system has neither collapsed not embraced democracy. Instead, the one-party rule has remained stable and the business owners complacent, which invites the question of why China’s economic liberalization has not created a business class who are not advocates of political change. This chapter aims to answer this question by looking into the interactions between the party-state and private business owners. It argues that the state–business relationship in China is one of interdependence, where the business owners depend on the party-state for business success and the party-state depends on business owners for economic growth.

In stark contrast to the Mao era, today’s party propaganda has adapted to consumer culture. This chapter argues that ideology and patriotism under Xi have been transformed into commodity and fashion. The chapter examines the mechanism of commodifying ideology from three angles. The first are the more traditional media and popular cultural products such as movies and CCTV New Year’s Gala. The second is through the enterprise of “telling China’s story” exemplified by venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs such as Eric Xun Li and Rao Jin, whose enterprises support party-endorsed popular intellectuals such as Jin Canrong, Zhang Weiwei, and Hu Xijin. The third is through the we-media, or self-media, flatform, where millions around the globe profit by posting repetitive sensationalized “loving China” videos. The trident principle manifests itself in the Chinese celebration of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s return to China. The party has masterminded a grand-scale ambitious propaganda movement that reaches far beyond the Great Wall of China.

This chapter explores the role of China’s state-run media in perpetuating “correct collective memory.” Using the official narrative of the state’s COVID-19 response as a case study, it demonstrates the capability of the CPS in shaping public discourse. The party’s Publicity Department oversees social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, which has nearly 600 million active users. The chapter shows how party agencies work with Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) who are elevated to prominent and authoritative status within the tightly controlled media environment. These storytellers promote Manichean rhetoric and nationalist sentiments by boosting polemics against foreign powers, presenting a narrow spectrum of facts, silencing opposing ideas as “unpatriotic.” The chapter demonstrates the party’s ability to deftly manipulate social media to advance politically expedient narratives.

This chapter challenges simplistic narratives of global corporate governance convergence by examining the complex reality of corporate governance in Asia. We introduce “faux convergence,” where jurisdictions adopt Anglo-American governance forms while adapting their function for local needs. Through analyzing independent directors, derivative actions, and stewardship codes across Asia, we show how surface-level similarities mask diverse practical implementations. Inter-Asian comparisons reveal local factors shaping governance that East–West comparisons might miss. By examining how Asian jurisdictions adapt similar governance mechanisms, we gain insights into the relationship between legal transplants and jurisdiction-specific practices in corporate law and governance. The faux convergence framework and inter-Asian comparative approach advance our understanding beyond simplistic convergence theories toward more nuanced, contextual perspectives that better reflect corporate governance in a globalized-yet-regionalized world. This research demonstrates the importance of careful, contextual analysis in comparative corporate law and governance, with inter-Asian comparison providing a valuable analytical tool.

The Communist Party is building a digitally capable state to remain at the vanguard of social and political development in China. CPC leaders are advancing digitalization forcefully throughout the governance and economic system through various policy initiatives. Informatization serves both better governance and public service, by overcoming previous bottlenecks and spatial challenges in administration. It also enhances the party state’s surveillance and monitoring capabilities. The CPC’s goals for China’s future under its continued rule require a digital infrastructure and economy that is both efficacious and subject to the Party’s control. To this end, the CPC is building out a comprehensive governance architecture for cyberspace, including the world’s most expansive data regulatory regime. The current leadership regards these digital capabilities as a key part of its comprehensive governance model that will enable the CPC to implement its domestic and international vision for China in the coming years.

The pre-1949 era witnessed the rise of wage labour and early efforts by workers and governments to counter labour precarity in China. This chapter gives a brief overview of how the three mechanisms that generate labour precarity played out for wage labourers before 1949, particularly during the Republican era (1912–1949), what labour institutions underpinned their functioning, and how they were countered. As some of these institutions and their variations have remained robust in post-1949 China, this chapter provides a starting point for explaining the emergence and evolution of labour tenure regimes after 1949. By outlining working conditions before 1949, it also serves as a baseline for comparing working conditions between the pre-1949 era and periods thereafter, thus allowing a better understanding of what CCP rule has meant for Chinese workers.

Matteo Ricci’s entry into China at the end of the sixteenth century coincided with broader changes in the regional power dynamics of East Asia. Ming China was entering a period of dynastic decay. It was plagued by economic problems and pressed by the Manchus, a peoples from beyond the Great Wall. Chapter 4, covering the turbulent Ming-Qing inter-dynastic transition period between 1610 and 1644, tells the story of a version of Matteo Ricci’s world map, which was appropriated by the Manchus as they were forming their own identity and were planning to invade China. The chapter shows that the Manchus, coming in contact with Ricci’s world map created a practice of translation which they then applied to Chinese maps.