Law and Development Minus Legal Transplants: The Example of China in Vietnam

Abstract

Legal transplants are broadly recognized as one of the main mechanisms for how donor states influence the legal development of recipient states. The experience of China, however, challenges convention. While, in recent years, China has been one of the largest capital-exporting countries in the world and has mobilized law to protect its investment in high-risk recipient states, legal transplants have, to date, not played a major role in China’s approach to law and development. This article examines this puzzle through the case of China’s participation in formulating Vietnam’s 2018 SEZ bill. In doing so, this article sets forth a number of hypotheses as to why Chinese law has thus far not assumed the form of legal transplant. The example of the SEZ bill demonstrates how Chinese legal transplants depend as much as on the “pull” of recipient states as they do the “push” of the donor.

Keywords: law and development, legal transplant, China, Vietnam, industrial policy, SEZ

JEL Classification: K20