Chapter 3 focuses on Hong Kong, where there were 261 death sentences but no executions after 1966. Chinese hostility to democratic reforms prevented the constitutional advances that occurred in other colonies in this period and left the British government vulnerable to parliamentary scrutiny in the wake of an execution. Previous studies argued that Britain required Hong Kong’s governors to commute death sentences from the mid 1960s, but colonial correspondence shows that clemency was not automatic until a decade later. Clemency appeals were judged on a case by case basis, even after Governor Murray MacLehose’s decision to uphold Tsoi Kwok-cheung’s death sentence was overruled by the British government in 1973. MacLehose thereafter played a central role in negotiating the Hong Kong Executive Council’s support for reprieves and eventually oversaw de facto abolition, as he strived to prevent capital punishment compromising his administration’s reform agenda. MacLehose also set a precedent for future governors by opposing reforms to the death penalty in other British Dependent Territories, which he feared would draw unwanted attention to Hong Kong’s anomalous position.

Threats to the ability of democratically elected governments to drive and preserve their citizens’ economic development and thus promote their human rights are threats to the confidence of their citizens in democracy itself. Threats to the cyber resilience of critical infrastructure assets — that enable and preserve economic development — are threats to that very confidence. This chapter positions the technical backbones for digital public infrastructure (DPI), which delivers digitally native essential services, as critical infrastructure assets. This chapter uses the approach to DPI of the world’s largest democracy as a case study. It explores how India’s DPI — built per an open standards-based paradigm, implemented by protocols and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that comprise the ‘India Stack’ – operates at the scale of the world’s largest population. It finds the cyber resilience of the technical backbones for India’s DPI vital to India’s democratic resilience. This chapter thus calls on India to prosecute systemic cyber risks to these backbones that stem from the critical software running on them. India must incentivise vendors of that software to invest in the security of their software development life cycles and mitigate software supply chain risks. India must also manage open source software risks to its DPI appropriately. This chapter concludes by putting forward how India can export its approach and the India Stack. Other democracies, especially India’s Global South partners, stand to gain from its experience, including by strengthening the trust and confidence of their citizens in democracy itself, as well as by implementing norms for responsible state conduct in cyberspace that were approved by the United Nations General Assembly. Such benefits will be reinforced by Indian advice on how to deploy DPI in a cyber-resilient manner, informed by the multilateral consensus on DPI, software security and cyber resilience, which India forged as G20 President in 2023.

Between 1499 and 1502, Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci surveyed unknown lands across the Atlantic, sparking European interest in new territories. His letters, describing a gigantic island, reached cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who named the landmass "America" on a 1507 map. This story highlights the power of early modern maps to create realities through naming and representation. The Introduction to Connected Cartographies contrasts this model of discovery with the understanding of China, which was not "discovered" in the same way. Instead, knowledge about China emerged through cross-cultural cartographic exchanges, involving translations and synthesis of Chinese and European maps. These exchanges began in the late sixteenth century and continued into the nineteenth century. This process resulted in translated maps that combined features from both traditions, challenging the traditional narrative of exploration and emphasizing the importance of translation in shaping global geography.

Following a socially embedded approach to the study of corruption, this chapter shows how corruption, its meaning, and the battle against it are deeply local and temporal. Relying primarily on original party documents and news reports, this chapter traces the chronological order of anti-corruption practices between 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established, and 2020 to illustrate how the meanings of corruption, types of misbehavior to address, and the type of selected punishment were all articulated temporally.

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.

A framing case study examines Chinese militarization of the Spratly Islands, located in the South China Seas. Then the chapter provides an overview of the law of the sea. The chapter discusses: (1) the historical evolution of rules that govern the sea, including principles of customary international law; (2) how states have used modern treaties to create zones of authority, including maritime zones, water rights, and seabed rights; and (3) how states resolve maritime boundary disputes.

Various cities across the world have been engaging in smart city projects, seeking effective solutions to various urban issues (such as traffic, waste, and housing) as well as global issues (energy, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic). This chapter explores Asian models of smart cities by analyzing how Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are engaging in smart city projects. In particular, this chapter highlights the role of Japan in shaping the ideas and norms of smart cities by exporting smart solutions. Exporting the ideas of smart cities can eventually affect urban governance, including legal infrastructures. This chapter also looks at China’s smart city model, associated with large-scale overseas capacity building, as a rival of Japan. Several methods of interaction exist via exporting smart solutions, including development cooperation, diffusion of ideas, and regulatory competition, and this chapter examines strategic differences among countries engaging in Asian smart city projects.

In China, the public has gradually shifted its focus from GDP growth to quality-of-life issues, presenting new challenges for the government. Food safety, as a prominent concern, exemplifies this shift. This chapter examines the impact of food safety issues on ordinary Chinese citizens’ trust in the government and their perceptions of governmental responsibility. The findings indicate that food safety problems diminish public trust in both central and local governments; however, this negative effect is mitigated among individuals with lower levels of education. Furthermore, the Chinese public is inclined to attribute primary responsibility for food safety crises to the central government rather than local authorities when assessing the severity of these issues. These results highlight the political implications of food safety concerns in China.

The introduction explains why China and North Korea would not have survived as communist states without Sino-North Korean friendship. It discusses the relevance of different theories of emotion to this issue. It shows how Sino-North Korean friendship was critical to the emotional regimes created in both states.

China’s rapid economic development exerts significant political effects. Modernization theory posits, with an optimistic outlook, that sustained economic growth will foster increasing public demands for political liberalization and democratization. Empirical findings presented in this chapter reveal that a majority of Chinese citizens report heightened satisfaction with their civil liberties and political rights following improvements in their overall well-being. Specifically, life satisfaction in the economic sphere demonstrates a positive spillover effect on satisfaction with civic and political rights. Furthermore, life satisfaction across economic, social, and individual dimensions positively influences the political realm, resulting in inflated satisfaction regarding limited civil and political rights.