Chinese and Western Perspectives on the Rule of Law and their International Implications

Abstract

The “rule of law” (ROL) is invoked by multinational institutions, Western governments and in China as a political expectation of what legitimate governance looks like. Chinese leaders regularly make claims that are translated into commitments to uphold the ROL, and they generalize this rhetoric to the international level. This chapter, written for a forthcoming handbook on China and international law, compares different understandings of the rule of law in the West and in China. The question we ask is whether Chinese and Western leaders, practitioners and scholars mean fundamentally different things when they speak of the ‘rule of law’ as an ideal to aspire. We argue that within China, there is a top-down control of the discourse of what the ROL can and should mean, both domestically and internationally, though the control varies in scope, intensity, and effectiveness over time. Constrained by top-down conceptions, an international ROL becomes a hypothetical yet coherent and attractive possibility. Western scholars, including most legal scholars and political scientists, are significantly more diverse and skeptical. Notwithstanding the lively debates about global constitutionalism and global legal pluralism, most Western legal scholars and political scientists do not speak about an international rule of law, for a variety of reasons. This does not mean that there is no role for international law, but it does mean that for many Western scholars and practitioners, domestic conversations about a ROL ideal do not travel to the international level. Ideals can be useful even if they remain elusive. Yet the very different Western and Chinese understandings of the ROL ideal and its international implications may limit China’s international efforts to build international support for the vision Chinese leaders are intentionally and assiduously creating.

Keywords: Rule of law, comparative politics, international law, international politics, discourses