Rewriting the Global Legal Map? China, the Indo-Pacific, and the [R]evolution of International Legal Order — ABILA International Law Weekend 2026 — PART 3
International Law Weekend 2026: China, Transnational Legal Orders, Geopolitical Competition, Legal Pluralism, and the Future of Global Governance
On October 24, 2026, I had the pleasure of chairing, moderating, and contributing as a discussant to the panel “Rewriting the Global Legal Map? China, the Indo-Pacific, and the [R]evolution of International Legal Order”, held at Fordham University School of Law in New York City during International Law Weekend 2026 (ILW 2026), organized by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA).
The panel was sponsored by the ABILA Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order, which I chair.
Our discussion formed part of the broader conference theme, “[R]evolution in the International Legal Order,” and examined whether contemporary geopolitical and economic transformations are producing fundamental changes in international law or, alternatively, generating new forms of adaptation, competition, and coexistence within existing international legal institutions.
I was delighted to bring together three distinguished scholars whose research approaches these questions from complementary perspectives:
Chair, Moderator and Discussant: Paolo Davide Farah, University of Tulsa, College of Law
- Gregory Shaffer, Georgetown University Law Center.
- Keith J. Hand, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
- Carrie Shu Shang, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
I participated as Chair, Moderator, and Discussant, contributing perspectives from my research on international economic law, legal pluralism, legal transplantation, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, regulatory competition, international energy governance, and the relationship between geopolitical power and institutional transformation.
The conversation offered an opportunity to connect different strands of scholarship that are often examined separately: international economic dispute settlement, Chinese domestic law and extraterritorial countermeasures, technology governance, transnational legal processes, infrastructure development, energy security, and the evolving relationship between public and private power.
Although these fields operate through different legal mechanisms, the discussion revealed several important connections.
In particular, we explored how geopolitical competition can simultaneously produce institutional convergence and political confrontation, how regulatory systems influence one another even when governments are in conflict, and why the participation of host states, businesses, legal professionals, and affected communities remains essential to understanding changes in international legal ordering.
1. Rewriting the Global Legal Map: Revolution, Evolution, or Reconfiguration?
I opened the panel by posing a question that framed the entire discussion:
What changes in law when the distribution of global power changes?
The question is not simply whether China has become more influential or whether the United States and other established powers are responding to its growing economic and geopolitical presence.
Rather, we must distinguish among several transformations that may occur simultaneously but do not necessarily have the same legal implications.
First, new actors may enter existing international institutions without fundamentally changing their legal architecture.
Second, established institutions may remain formally unchanged while the distribution of influence, authority, and decision-making power within them evolves.
Third, geopolitical transformations may contribute to changes in the substantive rules, institutional practices, and legal mechanisms through which international cooperation and competition are organized.
A new arbitration institution, for example, may operate within an already established international enforcement framework. A state may defend multilateral dispute settlement while simultaneously adopting domestic countermeasures against foreign economic restrictions. Likewise, an infrastructure project may involve several national jurisdictions and bilateral legal arrangements without creating a unified regional regulatory regime.
These distinctions are particularly important when examining China’s evolving role in international law.
China’s participation in global legal institutions does not necessarily imply the replacement of established rules by an entirely new international legal order. Conversely, the continued use of familiar legal mechanisms does not necessarily mean that the underlying distribution of authority remains unchanged.
The panel therefore examined the relationship between continuity and transformation, cooperation and confrontation, regulatory convergence and institutional pluralism.
I suggested four recurring questions to guide our discussion:
Who makes the operative decision?
Through what legal mechanism?
Who can contest it?
Who bears the costs?
These questions provided a common analytical framework through which to compare developments in international arbitration, trade and investment disputes, foreign-related legislation, technology regulation, and infrastructure governance.
2. Gregory Shaffer: Disaggregating China and Understanding Its Participation in Transnational Legal Orders
Professor Gregory Shaffer opened the substantive discussion by presenting research developed with Ji Li and Henry Gao on China’s engagement with international economic dispute settlement.
Their article, “China and International Economic Dispute Settlement: Disaggregating the State,” published in the Journal of International Economic Law, challenges approaches that treat China as a monolithic actor pursuing a single, coherent legal strategy.
Instead, their research identifies the different governmental institutions, businesses, legal professionals, academics, and other actors whose interests and institutional environments shape China’s engagement with transnational legal orders.
Professor Shaffer situated this work within a broader research project examining how international and transnational legal norms are adapted within domestic legal systems and how domestic developments can, in turn, influence international institutions.
His presentation focused on three distinct forms of dispute settlement:
International commercial arbitration, involving primarily private commercial actors;
World Trade Organization dispute settlement, involving disputes between states;
and investment arbitration, involving disputes between foreign investors and host states.
These differences are not merely procedural.
They influence which actors participate, whose interests are represented, how legal expertise develops, and which institutional incentives shape the implementation of international legal norms.
Commercial arbitration and legal experimentation
Professor Shaffer explained how China’s commercial arbitration landscape includes numerous institutions operating within different local political and economic environments.
Major commercial centers such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have developed important capacities for international arbitration, attracting lawyers, academics, and professionals familiar with transnational commercial practices.
At the same time, other arbitration institutions remain more closely connected to local political and institutional conditions.
The result is not a uniform transformation of China’s domestic legal system but a differentiated process in which transnational legal practices penetrate some institutions and regions more extensively than others.
China and WTO dispute settlement
Professor Shaffer also examined the development of China’s legal capacity following its accession to the WTO.
Chinese ministries, lawyers, scholars, businesses, and other professionals progressively acquired expertise in the interpretation and application of WTO rules.
China’s participation evolved from an initially cautious approach toward increasingly sophisticated engagement with the dispute settlement system.
This development illustrates an important dimension of transnational legal ordering: participation in international institutions can generate domestic professional communities and legal capacities capable of influencing subsequent institutional developments.
However, as Professor Shaffer emphasized, deeper participation in established institutions does not necessarily eliminate geopolitical tensions.
Investment arbitration and the Global South
A particularly significant comparison concerned China’s participation in investor-state dispute settlement.
Whereas China’s approach to WTO litigation reflected considerations associated with its relationships with other developing countries, Chinese investors have increasingly used investment arbitration against states in different regions of the developing world.
This distinction demonstrates why it is analytically insufficient to attribute every legal action involving Chinese actors to a single national strategy.
The incentives of private investors may differ substantially from those of diplomatic institutions, trade ministries, or national-security authorities.
Professor Shaffer’s broader contribution therefore emphasized that the identity of the actors involved, their institutional positions, and their relationships with state power are essential to understanding China’s role in transnational legal ordering.
3. Keith Hand: China’s Legal Struggle, Countermeasures, and the Use of Domestic Law in Geopolitical Competition
Professor Keith J. Hand developed a complementary perspective by examining the expanding role of Chinese domestic legislation in international competition.
His intervention drew upon his research on China’s evolving legal strategies, including “Waging External Struggle through Law: China’s Evolving Legal Strategies and Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit.”
Professor Hand traced the development of Chinese strategic thinking concerning the use of law as an instrument of political and geopolitical competition.
He explained that Chinese approaches to legal struggle have roots in earlier military and political doctrines, but that legal instruments have increasingly become part of broader strategies operating beyond conventional military confrontation.
In particular, growing tensions between China and the United States have encouraged the development of an increasingly extensive Chinese legislative framework addressing sanctions, export controls, foreign restrictions, and other measures affecting national economic and security interests.
Legal borrowing in a confrontational relationship
One of the most interesting aspects of Professor Hand’s presentation concerned the relationship between legal borrowing and geopolitical rivalry.
China’s legislative responses to foreign economic pressure frequently draw upon legal instruments and regulatory approaches previously developed in the United States.
This process creates an apparent paradox.
Although the two countries are increasingly engaged in geopolitical and economic competition, their regulatory systems can become more similar in certain areas precisely because each responds to the other’s legal instruments.
Thus, regulatory convergence does not necessarily imply political cooperation.
Legal borrowing may instead become part of a competitive process through which states seek to strengthen their capacity to respond to external pressure.
China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law
Professor Hand examined the 2021 Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, which authorizes Chinese authorities to adopt countermeasures against certain foreign restrictive actions.
He emphasized several characteristics of China’s developing countermeasure framework.
The legislation frequently employs broad standards, provides considerable administrative discretion, and allows authorities to calibrate their responses according to changing political and economic circumstances.
At the same time, Chinese official explanations frequently present these measures as defensive responses intended to uphold international law and resist foreign interference.
The resulting legal framework therefore combines external strategic objectives with domestic claims of legal legitimacy.
Taiwan, sanctions, and technological dependencies
Professor Hand illustrated these developments through China’s responses to former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan, subsequent measures targeting individuals and corporations, and restrictions affecting companies involved in arms sales and sensitive technologies.
He also discussed how sanctions and export restrictions can have different consequences depending on the economic exposure and technological dependencies of the affected companies.
Some measures may be largely symbolic, while others can have immediate practical consequences for production, supply chains, and commercial relationships.
His presentation therefore raised an important question that would return during our subsequent discussion:
Can legal countermeasures provide a mechanism for managing geopolitical confrontation, or can their increasing institutionalization contribute to further escalation?
4. Carrie Shu Shang: Transnational Legal Learning, Technology Competition, and the Circulation of Regulatory Models
Professor Carrie Shu Shang approached the panel’s central questions through the relationship between transnational law, regulatory learning, and technological competition.
Drawing on her scholarship and professional experience in international arbitration, she emphasized the importance of understanding transnational law as a process of learning, adaptation, and interaction among legal systems.
She organized her intervention around three questions: what is happening, where it is happening, and how transnational legal processes operate.
Geopolitical rivalry as a mechanism of legal diffusion
Professor Shang argued that intensifying U.S.-China competition has accelerated the circulation of legal and regulatory models.
Chinese institutions, companies, and legal professionals closely monitor developments in American legislation and regulation, particularly in areas involving technology, export controls, investment restrictions, national security, and data governance.
This process is not limited to governmental agencies.
Businesses and legal professionals also participate in the circulation of regulatory knowledge, sometimes responding to developments in foreign legal systems with remarkable speed.
Professor Shang emphasized that the diffusion of legal forms may continue even when formal diplomatic cooperation becomes difficult.
Indeed, geopolitical competition itself may stimulate regulatory borrowing.
This observation connected closely with Professor Hand’s discussion of China’s countermeasure legislation, while extending the analysis to technology-intensive sectors and private commercial actors.
Technology governance and strategic competition
Professor Shang discussed several areas in which legal and regulatory competition has become increasingly significant, including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, connected vehicles, biotechnology, and clean-energy technologies.
She examined how companies respond to rapidly changing export controls and regulatory requirements, including by seeking specialized expertise and adapting their business strategies.
A particularly interesting aspect of her presentation concerned technology licensing.
Licensing has traditionally been understood primarily through private contractual arrangements.
However, in technologically sensitive sectors, licensing agreements may also facilitate the transfer of knowledge, technological capabilities, and strategic economic advantages.
Consequently, activities that appear to involve ordinary private contractual relationships may increasingly become subject to national-security restrictions and geopolitical considerations.
Transnational legal developments beyond China and the United States
Professor Shang also emphasized that the effects of U.S.-China competition extend far beyond the two countries.
States in Southeast Asia and other regions may respond to competing regulatory systems by adopting, modifying, or combining elements of different legal approaches.
She referred to developments involving Malaysia, Singapore, technology regulation, and regional legal adaptation.
These examples highlight the importance of examining how third countries respond to competing economic and regulatory pressures.
Rather than assuming that legal systems simply align with one geopolitical power or another, scholars should investigate the institutional choices and adaptations made by individual jurisdictions.
Her presentation introduced an important perspective into the panel:
Even during periods of intense geopolitical confrontation, transnational legal processes may continue to generate learning, adaptation, and new forms of interaction across borders.
5. My Contribution: Legal Pluralism, Regulatory Competition, and the Transformation of International Legal Order
Building upon the preceding presentations, I introduced several observations concerning the relationship between legal neutrality, regulatory competition, legal pluralism, legal transplantation, and infrastructure governance.
One of the questions raised by Professor Shang’s intervention concerned whether certain legal instruments and commercial relationships can still be treated as politically neutral.
Is law ever neutral?
I suggested that arrangements traditionally presented as technical, commercial, or private increasingly reveal their political and geopolitical significance.
Consider payment systems, secured transactions, cloud infrastructure, digital platforms, data governance, and technology licensing.
These legal and technological infrastructures are not simply mechanisms facilitating private economic exchange.
They can also determine access to markets, control over strategic resources, the enforcement of sanctions, and the distribution of economic and political power.
The increasing role of private corporations in technologically sensitive sectors further complicates the traditional distinction between public and private authority.
A similar question arises in relation to emerging commercial activities in outer space, where private technological capabilities interact with national strategic interests.
These developments suggest that the distinction between public and private ordering is often considerably more complex than conventional legal categories imply.
Legal pluralism and selective legal transplantation
I connected these observations with my recent scholarship on the circulation of legal models and China’s evolving position within international legal ordering.
In particular, I discussed research developed in:
“China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative,” published in the Asian Journal of Law and Society by Cambridge University Press.
Our research examines China’s transformation from an important recipient of foreign legal models into an increasingly influential participant in the circulation and adaptation of legal and regulatory approaches.
I suggested that legal pluralism offers a useful framework for understanding how different legal systems, regulatory models, institutional practices, and normative expectations interact.
The circulation of legal models does not necessarily produce uniformity.
Instead, states and other actors may engage in selective borrowing, institutional adaptation, and regulatory experimentation.
At the same time, these processes can generate both cooperation and conflict.
I therefore proposed regulatory competition as an additional analytical category connecting the contributions of the panelists.
The question is not simply whether different systems are converging or diverging.
We must also examine how legal models compete, how they are adapted to local circumstances, and how multiple legal arrangements coexist within an increasingly interconnected but politically contested international environment.
The Belt and Road Initiative and the role of host states
I also discussed how China’s Belt and Road Initiative provides an important setting for examining these processes.
BRI-related legal arrangements do not necessarily establish a single uniform Chinese legal model across participating states.
Instead, infrastructure and development projects frequently operate through combinations of bilateral agreements, domestic regulatory arrangements, commercial contracts, investment protections, and institutional practices.
The resulting legal configurations may differ considerably depending on the participating states, sectors, and projects.
This observation led to an important distinction concerning the meaning of voluntary legal transplantation.
A state may formally consent to an arrangement while possessing limited bargaining power or facing substantial economic constraints.
Similarly, the participation of national authorities does not necessarily guarantee that affected communities have meaningful opportunities to influence decisions.
Consequently, formal acceptance must be distinguished from effective participation, institutional accountability, and the practical capacity to negotiate safeguards.
Energy governance and competing institutional models
I connected these questions with another recent article, coauthored with Davide Giacomo Zoppolato and Tivadar Ötvös:
“China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact on the Energy Independence of the European Union,” also published in the Asian Journal of Law and Society.
Our research examines the interactions among China’s infrastructure initiatives, energy security, international economic relationships, and regional governance arrangements.
During the panel, I referred to the Central Asia–China gas pipeline arrangements and their differences from European regional energy governance models.
The comparison highlights the importance of examining the specific legal architecture of infrastructure projects rather than assuming that cross-border investment necessarily produces regional legal integration.
Bilateral arrangements, host-state measures, joint ventures, and project-specific coordination may facilitate extensive cooperation without creating common institutions equivalent to those found in other regional governance frameworks.
These arrangements also illustrate how economic cooperation and geopolitical competition may operate simultaneously within closely interconnected sectors.
6. Cooperation, Confrontation, and the Possibility of Legal De-escalation
Following the opening presentations, we examined whether the increasing use of law in geopolitical competition creates opportunities for managing conflict or instead contributes to its institutionalization.
I raised the question of whether legal mechanisms might provide channels for de-escalation or whether the adoption of increasingly elaborate countermeasure frameworks could reinforce reciprocal confrontation.
Professor Shaffer emphasized that transnational legal ordering does not necessarily produce cooperative or normatively desirable outcomes.
Legal norms and institutional practices can circulate across borders even when their purpose is to facilitate competition or coercion.
The transfer of legal models must therefore be distinguished from the political objectives pursued through those models.
He also returned to the importance of implementation.
Adopting similar legal instruments does not mean that they will operate identically.
Their practical application depends on which institutions exercise authority and what incentives shape their decisions.
Professor Shang similarly emphasized that the circulation of legal norms can have different consequences depending on the receiving jurisdiction and the specific institutional context.
In Southeast Asia, for example, legal adaptation may create opportunities for commercial development and professional specialization.
Professor Hand added another perspective by discussing the relationship between economic countermeasures and diplomatic negotiation.
He suggested that reciprocal restrictions, including measures affecting critical minerals and technology-related trade, can sometimes create incentives for renewed dialogue.
Legal and economic pressure may therefore operate not only as instruments of confrontation but also as part of the bargaining processes through which governments seek to manage disagreements.
This exchange revealed an important complexity:
Law can facilitate cooperation, structure competition, legitimize countermeasures, and create incentives for negotiation—sometimes within the same geopolitical relationship.
7. Host States, Local Communities, and the Distribution of Legal Authority
Another significant part of our discussion concerned the role of countries and communities affected by international economic arrangements.
I asked:
What would demonstrate that host states and affected communities are genuinely participating in rulemaking rather than merely receiving arrangements developed elsewhere?
This question is especially important in the context of infrastructure development, energy investment, and transnational economic governance.
Professor Hand discussed the role of private companies within China’s expanding regulatory framework.
Foreign companies may face difficult compliance decisions when legal obligations imposed by different jurisdictions conflict.
Such pressures can influence corporate behavior and encourage companies to seek changes in governmental policy.
Chinese legal frameworks may also provide domestic actors with mechanisms to challenge certain foreign restrictions.
Private actors can therefore be both constrained and empowered by the circulation of regulatory requirements.
I connected these observations with the different bargaining positions of host states participating in infrastructure projects.
In some circumstances, recipient governments may retain substantial influence over project conditions, implementation, and safeguards.
In others, unequal economic relationships may restrict their ability to negotiate or revise arrangements.
From the perspective of affected communities, the central question may be less about which foreign power provides financing and more about who retains the authority to modify project rules, demand safeguards, or obtain effective remedies after investment has taken place.
Professor Shaffer emphasized that institutional implementation operates at multiple levels.
National agreements do not automatically determine what happens locally.
Domestic institutions, regional authorities, and local communities may influence whether and how international commitments are implemented.
He referred to examples involving Pakistan and to differentiated patterns of legal institutionalization within China itself.
These exchanges reinforced the importance of avoiding approaches that treat international economic arrangements as relationships solely between central governments.
The implementation of transnational law is shaped by institutions and actors operating at national, regional, and local levels.
8. Audience Discussion: National Security, Geoeconomics, and International Legal Fragmentation
The audience raised several important questions that extended our conversation into broader debates about international economic governance.
One question concerned the growing use of national-security justifications in trade and technology regulation and what this development might mean for the future of the international legal order.
Another addressed the apparent tensions between economic interdependence and geopolitical confrontation, particularly the differences between China’s domestic economic relationships and its international political and commercial engagements.
A further question examined the increasing development of Chinese arbitration institutions and whether efforts to encourage the use of Chinese law and dispute settlement venues are producing significant practical changes.
From neoliberalism to geoeconomics?
Professor Shaffer responded by reflecting on the changing intellectual paradigms through which international economic relations are interpreted.
He contrasted the prominence of neoliberal approaches in earlier discussions of international economic governance with the increasingly influential role of geoeconomics and national-security considerations.
He also raised an important concern about the role of analytical frameworks, including those reproduced through artificial intelligence.
How we conceptualize international relations can influence how we interpret events, identify risks, and justify subsequent political choices.
In highly competitive environments, assumptions about inevitable confrontation may become self-reinforcing.
This possibility is especially consequential for smaller states navigating relationships among competing major powers.
Political geography and legal geography
Building upon this discussion, I suggested that geoeconomics should also be understood in connection with political geography and legal geography.
The international legal order has never been entirely uniform.
Different regions, institutions, economic relationships, and legal traditions have historically developed distinct approaches to governance.
Contemporary geopolitical competition makes these differences increasingly visible, but it does not necessarily create them from nothing.
Legal geography can help identify how authority, institutional practices, and legal relationships are distributed across particular regions and economic corridors.
This perspective complements the analysis of legal pluralism and regulatory competition by emphasizing the spatial dimensions of international legal ordering.
I also discussed the importance of distinguishing among different economic actors when analyzing China’s international relationships.
The experiences of domestic Chinese businesses, foreign companies operating in China, and Chinese investors expanding abroad cannot necessarily be explained through the same political or economic framework.
Domestic legitimacy and legal countermeasures
Professor Hand returned to the domestic political dimensions of China’s developing legal framework.
He explained how the adoption of countermeasure legislation may reinforce official narratives concerning the construction of a socialist rule-of-law state and the legitimacy of responses to foreign pressure.
Legal instruments can provide a basis for governmental action while also responding to domestic expectations concerning national strength and resistance to external interference.
This creates a relationship between international competition and domestic political legitimacy.
Arbitration, institutional competition, and practical effectiveness
Professor Shang addressed questions concerning China’s arbitration institutions and their capacity to attract international commercial disputes.
Drawing upon her professional experience, she cautioned against assuming that institutional development automatically translates into international competitiveness.
Chinese arbitral institutions themselves operate within a competitive domestic environment, and their practices may remain substantially oriented toward domestic commercial relationships.
The effectiveness of efforts to expand Chinese arbitration therefore depends not only on institutional reforms or governmental objectives but also on commercial preferences, professional practices, and the decisions of the parties selecting dispute settlement mechanisms.
9. What Does It Mean to Rewrite the Global Legal Map?
Our discussion demonstrated that the transformation of international legal order cannot be adequately understood through a simple opposition between continuity and rupture.
Several developments may occur simultaneously.
States may adopt similar regulatory instruments while pursuing increasingly divergent geopolitical objectives.
Established international institutions may attract new participants while experiencing changes in their internal distribution of authority.
Private companies may facilitate the circulation of legal norms even when diplomatic relationships deteriorate.
Infrastructure and investment projects may generate extensive cross-border cooperation without producing unified regional legal institutions.
Host states and local communities may shape implementation, but their actual influence depends on the distribution of economic, political, and institutional power.
These developments also raise questions about the distinction between formal legal convergence and substantive institutional change.
The adoption of similar rules does not necessarily produce similar outcomes.
Nor does the creation of new institutions necessarily establish a fundamentally different international legal order.
A meaningful assessment requires attention to the actors who exercise authority, the legal mechanisms through which they operate, and the opportunities available to contest their decisions.
The discussion also highlighted the importance of distinguishing among different areas of international law.
A development that represents gradual institutional evolution in commercial arbitration may simultaneously contribute to significant disruption in international security relations.
Similarly, regulatory convergence in technology governance may coexist with heightened commercial restrictions and geopolitical competition.
The international legal order is therefore not changing uniformly across every field.
Rather, its transformation is occurring through overlapping processes of adaptation, competition, institutional continuity, selective legal transplantation, regulatory diffusion, and political confrontation.
10. Continuing the Conversation
I am grateful to Gregory Shaffer, Keith J. Hand, and Carrie Shu Shang for accepting my invitation and contributing their scholarship, professional experience, and insights to this discussion.
Their presentations and subsequent exchanges demonstrated the importance of examining international legal change from multiple disciplinary and institutional perspectives.
I am also grateful to the colleagues and participants who joined us at Fordham and contributed questions and observations that helped extend the conversation beyond the initial presentations.
My thanks go to the American Branch of the International Law Association and the organizers of International Law Weekend 2026 for providing the opportunity to organize this session.
The panel forms part of the continuing activities of the ABILA Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order and connects closely with the broader research agenda of the International Law Association Study Group on International Law, Global Challenges, and the Impact of Emerging Powers on Global Governance, which I also chair.
Both initiatives seek to encourage international scholarly dialogue concerning the changing role of emerging powers, the interaction among competing legal and institutional arrangements, and the implications of geopolitical transformations for international cooperation and global governance.
The discussion at International Law Weekend reinforced the importance of approaching these developments without assuming either the inevitable fragmentation of international law or the automatic emergence of a more inclusive international legal order.
Whether legal transformation increases participation, accountability, and institutional legitimacy depends on the specific arrangements through which authority is exercised and contested.
Ultimately, the question is not simply whether the global legal map is being rewritten.
It is also who participates in rewriting it, which legal instruments structure that process, whose interests are represented, and who bears the consequences of the resulting arrangements.
Forthcoming Posts in This Series
This article is the third installment in a series documenting my participation in International Law Weekend 2026 and the scholarly discussion organized by the ABILA Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order.
The forthcoming contributions will examine in greater detail:
PART 4 — Opening Remarks: Who Is Rewriting the Global Legal Map?
PART 5 — Gregory Shaffer: China’s Multi-Actor Engagement with Transnational Legal Orders
PART 6 — Keith J. Hand: Legal Struggle, Sanctions, and China’s Countermeasure Legislation
PART 7 — Carrie Shu Shang: Transnational Legal Learning, Technology Competition, and Regulatory Adaptation
PART 8 — Paolo Davide Farah: Legal Pluralism, Regulatory Competition, and the Reconfiguration of International Legal Order
These posts will explore the individual presentations, the subsequent exchanges among the participants, and the broader scholarly questions emerging from the discussion.
Selected References
Farah, Paolo Davide, Davide Giacomo Zoppolato, and Tivadar Ötvös. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Its Impact on the Energy Independence of the European Union.” Asian Journal of Law and Society 12, no. 2 (2025): 274–303. Cambridge University Press.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215879
Hand, Keith J. “Waging External Struggle through Law: China’s Evolving Legal Strategies and Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit.” UC San Diego 21st Century China Center Special Report (2022).
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4208433
Shaffer, Gregory, Ji Li, and Henry Gao. “China and International Economic Dispute Settlement: Disaggregating the State.” Journal of International Economic Law (2026).
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6576238
Shang, Carrie Shu. “US-China Transnational Law in a Time of Trade Crisis.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 28, no. 2 (2021): 139–204.
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol28/iss2/4
Zoppolato, Davide Giacomo, and Paolo Davide Farah. “China’s Path to Modernization and Legal Pluralism: Transplants and the Belt and Road Initiative.” Asian Journal of Law and Society 12, no. 2 (2025): 109–144. Cambridge University Press.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5215873
International Law Weekend 2026
October 22–24, 2026
Fordham University School of Law, New York City
American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA)
Panel: Rewriting the Global Legal Map? China, the Indo-Pacific, and the [R]evolution of International Legal Order
Saturday, October 24, 2026
Sponsored by: ABILA Committee on International Law, China, and the Reconfiguration of the Global Order
Chair, Moderator, and Discussant: Paolo Davide Farah
Speakers: Gregory Shaffer, Keith J. Hand, and Carrie Shu Shang
#InternationalLaw #ILW2026 #ABILA #InternationalLawAssociation #China #IndoPacific #GlobalGovernance #InternationalEconomicLaw #LegalPluralism #RegulatoryCompetition #TransnationalLaw #BeltAndRoadInitiative #Geoeconomics #InternationalArbitration #EnergyGovernance