Coalition for Peace & Ethics

Björn Ahl (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Cologne); Larry Catá Backer (The Pennsylvania State University (University Park); and Yongxi Chen (ANU College of Law) are delighted to announce the upcoming publication of a special issue of The (Vol. 24, No. 3) which we have the honor to edit. It is entitled "Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction."

We have distributed (through SSRN) the Introduction to the special issue (with great thanks to Bjorn Ahl for taking the leading role in its marvelous drafting). The Abstract to the Introduction provides a taste of the issue and its objectives:

"Social credit is a mode of governance that spurs private actors, as well as state agencies, to base their decision-making regarding others on credibility assessments. It lays out a central-level framework for creating various mechanisms, ranging from commercial personal credit ratings to compliance assessments and blacklists run by regulatory agencies, with the aim of incentivizing certain behaviors. In addition to a range of commercial pilot projects, the Chinese party-state has also embraced the use of blacklists for trust-breakers and credibility-based regulation to enhance its governing capacity to tackle a wide range of societal problems. This special issue investigates the multifaceted relationship between law as a traditional form of regulation and social credit in China. Together and from differing perspectives, the special issue’s contributors argue that the SCS reflects changes in regulatory approaches that imply a fundamental transformation of how law is enforced, as well as a profound alteration of the forms and functions of law itself. In analyzing various subsystems or components of the SCS, the issue provides insight into the logic and rules underlying social credit assessments and explores their link to China’s political-legal normative framework. (Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction)"

With links to the Introduction and some of the earlier drafts of contributions to the issue.

Announcing Upcoming Publication of Special Issue--"Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction ," The China Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2024, forthcoming)

https://lnkd.in/ezDZ5Kut

"The Prince Xian of Hejian, Liu De, was made a prince in the second year of Emperor Jing the Filial; he enjoyed studying classics from earlier eras, and sought truth from facts. When he obtained a valuable book from the people, he always made a copy by transcribing it and returned the copy to them, keeping the original himself, and provided gold and silk to keep those guests coming" [“河間獻王德以孝景前二年立，修學好古，實事求是。從民得善書，必為好寫與之， 留其真，加金帛賜以招之。”]

Is it possible to understand the Chinese Mass Line (from the people to the People) with the core principle ("Seek Truth From Facts") as sourced in the same core insight--and to extract that insight from the Book of Han? Is this what might be an applied expression of Xi Jinping's Cultural Thought, emphasized since 2023? And is all of this an application of semiotic analytics with Chinese Leninist characteristics? Might they apply with equal force to similar core concepts of liberal democratic political-social orders? lThese are the questions that serve as the basis for the thought experiment that is the object of this post.

Historical Semiotics and an Application of Xi Jinping's Thought on Culture (习近平文化思想)--Seeking "Truth From Facts "(实事求是) in the "Mass Line" (群众路线) in a ReReading of 《漢書 ·河間獻王德傳》"The Biography of Wang De in Hejian" From the Book of Han

The last of 3 posts about 3rd and its focus on a more comprehensive Socialist modernization. This one includes some reflections on 's gloss on the 3rd Plenum Decision [Resolution]. Mr. Xi's gloss is first framed within a general discussion of the power, form, and function of glossing a text and its normative-political ramifications.

The 3 objectives of Mr. Xi's gloss: (1) to explain and situate the considerations that determined the topics of the 3rd Plenum, aligning the topic with the critical challenge which the collective faces in its march toward its normative objectives (short term, bit always with the long term in view); (2) to explain the drafting process of the resolution and thus its authoritative legitimacy as a function of conformity to process and normative expectations; and (3) to explain basic framework to guide its operationalization.

In each of these senses, Mr. Xi's gloss adds both detail and, perhaps more importantly for officials, emphasis. That emphasis, in turn, may help guide the development of orders of importance of items that are now included in the action plans around --with different effect at the national, provincial, and local levels--as well as in the Special Autonomous Regions. Thus, for example, Part 1's focus on the "four urgent needs" ( #迫切需要) will likely acquire a life of its own within the lexicon of New Era principles: (( 1）实现新时代新征程党的中心任务的迫切需要；（2） 推进国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的迫切需要；（3）更好适应我国社会主要矛盾变化的迫切需要；（4） 推动党和国家事业行稳致远的迫切需要 [the urgent need (1) to achieve the Party’s central task in the new era and new journey; (2) to advance the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity; (3) to better adapt to the changes in the main contradictions in our society; (4) to promote the steady and long-term development of the cause of the Party and the country.].

There is also something in it for foreigners in 3(4): "improve the anti-sanction, anti-interference, and anti-"long-arm jurisdiction" mechanism; improve the trade risk prevention and control mechanism, improve the foreign-related legal system and the rule of law implementation system, and deepen international cooperation in law enforcement and justice." For Europeans anxious to extend the reach of their human rights based supply chain due diligence legal systems, and for Americans expanding human rights based sanctions regions, there may be much of interest.

Links to the text of Mr. Xi's gloss in the original Chinese along with a crude English translation are provided.

The 3rd Plenum Official Gloss--习近平：关于《中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革、推进中国式现代化的决定》的说明 [Xi Jinping: Explanation on the "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and Promoting Chinese-style Modernization"]

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-3rd-plenum-official-gloss-xi.html

The tends to apply the lens of economic and social policy to the key areas identified in the preceding CPC Congress. This one was no different. It's emphasis on the further, and to some extent extensive, elaboration of Socialist modernization, was noteworthy--a topic that occupied much of the space devoted to the text of the Communique. with (eg 中国式现代化), in its current forms, remains a key driver of Chinese economic/political policy since the end of the Cultural Revolution, even as its content and context changes. " * * *

In theory, at least, the principal effect of the shift was to produce a change in the meaning of "development of productive forces" beyond material productivity to its social, cultural, and political elements.In practice that has produced a variety of efforts to develop policy through which it might be possible to change the context and measurement of development (by broadening the factors to be considered) and to situate development much more deeply within the coordinated efforts to manage social, cultural, economic, and political movement toward longer term goals. * * * That, in turn, permitted a broadening of the meaning of the objects around which production could be understood, utilized, and their value added or contribution to overcoming the principal contradiction could be measured. * * *

Chinese policy, then, could become as concerned about the full development of the ideal worker, cadre, family, social and cultural apparatus as it had been concerned, in the earlier era of historical development with the factors and objects of economic development more detached from its social, cultural, and political resonances. Moreover, socialist modernization--and especially is high quality development-- can apply as well to the modernization of the mass line through whole process people's democracy, and with it the Socialist law system and the "correct view of human rights" ((坚持正确人权) . More importantly, the structural elements of reformed socialist modernization must necessarily follow trade and development outward, with China as the exemplar and the hub of a new system of foreign trade that enhances socialist modernization at home and aligns partner systems abroad. None of this necessarily means an abandonment of the traditional approaches to the development of productive forces* * *

All of this, though, had to be rationalized in a forward facing way. That was the point of the 3rd Plenum and the CPC Central Committee Decision, the Chinese and English text of which is provided along with brief reflections.

Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese Style Modernization [中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革　推进中国式现代化的决定]

Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Promoting Chinese Style Modernization [中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革　推进中国式现代化的决定] A blog about globalization, governance, law, corporations, religion and culture in changing times.

Snippets:

The Party of has just concluded the 3rd plenary session of the 20th Central Committee. Each of the plenary sessions in the normal cycle between the Communist Party Congress advances, or at least crystalizes movements in vanguard policy, their application, and, with it, changes in personnel in important positions that sometimes signal nothing and sometimes underscore the conceptual changes and advances undertaken. The third plenum usually applies the lens of economic and social policy to the key areas identified in the preceding Congress. * * *

The paragraph on high quality development stands out . . . It remains one of the two core principles that distinguish socialist modernization in the Era of Reform and Opening Up from .

And indeed, the principle of socialist modernization remains central the evolution of principles of Chinese Marxist-Leninism in and for the New Era of Chinese historical development and a key element of the way in which policy is shaped to meet the current principal contradiction around which applied principles are built and against which they are measured. The Communique builds a comprehensive system around socialist modernization in interesting ways. It is presented as a comprehensive organizing principle and strategy for organizing and rationalizing policy around a core animating principle. Its added value is in its "connective tissue"--socialist modernization connects the Xi and Deng leadership periods traveling significantly from its articulation during the Era of Reform and Opening Up; in this way it provides an important example of the dynamic element in Chinese theory, one that can flow with the times. Much now fits within the modernization umbrella. The comprehensiveness of this lens came across in the body of the text.

Text of the Communique in English and Chinese along with some brief reflections are included.

中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第三次全体会议公报 [Communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China]

中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第三次全体会议公报 [Communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China] A blog about globalization, governance, law, corporations, religion and culture in changing times.

Verfssungsblog recently published a most useful "explainer" on the 'Hong Kong 47 'verdicts. The Explainer was authored by my friend and colleague Dr. Pui-yin Lo, a barrister in private practice in Hong Kong and a part-time lecturer of the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong. He explains his objectives in the opening paragraph to the essay:

"Recently, the first court verdicts in the trial surrounding the “Hong Kong 47” were handed down. The trial is one of several political trials that are underway in Hong Kong (HK), a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These trials are political partly because the accused are political figures involved in the 2019 civil unrest, partly because the accused are being tried under the National Security Law (NSL) introduced into HK by the PRC Central Authorities, and partly because they have been didactic spectacles revealing the actions and consequences sought by the accused. This blog post explains the background of the “Hong Kong 47” case and shows why it raises questions that are of interest outside of Hong Kong as well. "

The issues around this trial and the trajectories of the development of the application of the NSL for HK-SAR and its interpretation by HK-SAR Courts is fascinating. In addition to the Explainer essay, the lins to the Statements by the European External Action Service and the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China are included.

Verfassungsblog: Pui-yin Lo, "The'“Hong Kong 47' Verdict: An Explainer"

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/verfassungsblog-pui-yin-lo-thehong-kong.html

Snippets: * * * is a maturing version of the "legal mandatory measures" school for applying the UNGP "smart mix of measures" principles. . . but in its multi-lateral, national measures coordination aspects. * * *

Yet there are other schools that are being developed. * * * A potentially significantly distinct variation within the legal mandatory measures school is the "internationalist legal mandatory measures" school; one that focuses on international instruments as the superior and organizing source of both norms and structuring techniques. * * * These then may generate efforts to fins either common ground or to mold the internationalist sub-school within the EU multi-lateral mandatory measures school. And the third may be the "Socialist legal mandatory measures" school [which] reflects a preference for development as the driving force of analysis and is deeply contextual but as a function of the overarching normative framework of Marxist-Leninist vanguardism.

At the same time, it ought to be borne in mind that there are still strong streams of "voluntary measures" schools. * * * Each includes some "smart mix" of measures more oriented toward markets driven focus and compliance based disclosure regimes with nudging elements. They include substantial measures targeting private law arrangements within markets that shape expectations but avoid public law management. A variation emerges as a voluntary measures school. This approach combines markets driven compliance with substantial state targeted intervention through human rights infused measures and takes a variety of forms * * * Other places in the and the "periphery" add contextually rich variation.



It might also be useful to remind oneself of the following in working through these variations of smart mixes and the arguments of their critics and advocates. First, the rejected the notion of a one size fits all set of "best" smart mixes; context matters, including ideological, historical, political, cultural, and social context. Second, even the "best" smart mix is not eternal, nor is it likely that one can craft text that would be flexible enough to survive the realities of historical change. Third, smart mixes reflect subjective rather than objective application of the UNGP principles in the sense that they each represent an articulation of the way in which a collective views the world and its choices within it * * * Fourth, but even adverse human rights impacts are themselves subject to quite distinctive means of identification and measurement * * * Fifth, it is important to note, then, that the great value of the UNGP are as guardrails against conceptual disintegration * * *

A Quite Interesting Verfassungsblog Blog Symposium (in Cooperation with the German Institute for Human Rights): "Unboxing the New EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive"

A Quite Interesting Verfassungsblog Blog Symposium (in Cooperation with the German Institute for Human Rights): "Unboxing the New EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive" A blog about globalization, governance, law, corporations, religion and culture in changing times.

A double reflections: Reading through Jeremy Daum's excellent consideration of the NDRC's Social Credit Action Plan for 2024-2025, and the Action Plan itself. Lots to think about--my focus is on tensions between jurisdictional silos and comprehensive coordination, and the focus on corporate social credit in the shadow of high or new quality development (“新质生产力”).

Jeremy Daum: on the National Development and Reform Commission "2024-2025 Social Credit System Construction Action Plan" 《2024—2025年社会信用体系建设行动计划》] (20 May 2024).

Jeremy Daum: on the National Development and Reform Commission "2024-2025 Social Credit System Construction Action Plan" 《2024—2025年社会信用体系建设行动计划》] (20 May 2024). A blog about globalization, governance, law, corporations, religion and culture in changing times.

This post considers, quite briefly, reflections on several points that may weigh significantly on the way in which one approaches the inevitable and now unstoppable trend toward regulation production, and its convergence among the political collective of and their international instrumentalities. It then offers the recent efforts of to invest in a comprehensive regulation of tech and AI for consideration as an example.

The reflections start with a consideration of the character and rise of . It then thinks about the objects that are produced and consumed within regulation platforms both as an expression of regulatory solidarity within the group of State collectives and as a consumable among those to which it is directed. It both creates borders (national legal expression in context) and pathways (the corridors through which well directed AI development and products can be negotiated and value captured).

It then considers the products of the Regulation Platform as consumable objects. Regulation platforms build solidarity among States. Regulation Platforms build and seek to preserve hierarchies among categorical values that drive system building among humans acting collectively--political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Identity always drives human collectivity; its rationalization makes identification easier by reference to any behavior, belief, or physical characteristic that is elevated to serve as the border of the collectives.

Lastly it approaches the issue of the value of regulatory objects as contextual and coordinated. Regulatory objects have no value in themselves. As briefly suggested above, their internal value is significant; but value internal to the Governance Platform (States) and external to it can be constructed within the contexts in which it is to be deployed. Through these Regulation platforms the internal coherence of political collectives are strengthened, and solidarity among regulation producing collectives is advanced. Their projection outward also adds internal value for regulatory producers by enhancing their position as against other producers of objects of value to human collectives. Their external value is also significant but can vary widely.

It is in this light that it becomes more useful to consider, and absorb the value of, efforts to broaden the web of compatible regulatory bases being undertaken not just by primary or core States, but also by States that sit in other places along global systems of the production of objects and values. Vietnam provides a current example.

Platform Governance and Regulation Platforms for AI Governance Objects--Collective Meaning Making, the AI "Other", and Regulatory Commodification

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/platform-governace-and-regulation.html

This Post continues the exploration of the State duty to protect , considering the first of the four sets of functionally differentiated operational principles into which the operational principles of the State duty to protect is divided.



Chapter 8's focus on Principle 3, which describes the arsenal of regulatory measures available to States to meet their mandatory obligations to protect human rights (UNGP Principle 1) and to advance their expected obligation to manage expectations around the corporate responsibility to respect human rights at least within their territory/jurisdiction (UNGP Principle 2). But the Principle does more than that. It introduces key sub-principles in its black letter. Among them are the principle of "periodic assessment" of regulation and policy which was to be guided by the application of an "adequacy" standard. It tied this principle of periodic assessment to an obligation to "address gaps" revealed by periodic adequacy assessments, but not necessarily to resolve or bridge them completely. It also articulated a principle of regulatory coherence, built around the superiority of the State obligation to build a regulatory system around the duty to prevent/mitigate/remedy adverse human rights impacts, though it did not specific how these were to be identified and measured. It elevated policy and guidance efforts as an essential tool of the State duty and adopted a principle of communication as a necessary means of fostering respect for human rights by business (though the concept could be generalized).

UNGP Principle 3 also introduced concepts and principles through its Official Commentary that, in some respects, have exceeded the influence and authority of its black letter. Principal among these was the concept/principle of a " of measures" that from the germ of an idea embedded in a 2009 Report to the General Assembly of the has become a key element (conceptual and practical) around which debates about the use and approaches to the regulatory palette offered in UNGP Principle 3 might be "best" deployed. * * *

Lastly, UNGP Principle 3 remind one of the complexities of reconciling the growing body of human rights related or impacting principles, measures, laws, and expectations. That was illustrated by the difficulties around transparency--communication of expectations. The consequences is a resort to balancing. Yet human rights balancing presents its own challenges, ones which the UNGP do not directly address.

Part 9 (Part II, Chapter 8 UNGP: State Duty to Protect Human Rights, Operational Principles I (General State Regulatory and Policy Functions (UNGP ¶ 3))--Vetting the Discussion Draft: "The United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights: A Commentary

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/part-9-part-ii-chapter-8-ungp-state.html

The discursive focus on the concept of high or new quality (“ #新质生产力”) in China has been intensifying recently. Emerging out of the evolution of theory from out of and increasingly distinguished from the form and style of production at the center of the Reform and Opening Up Era, new quality development theory is meant to suggest a broadening and deepening of concepts of production and productivity from out of the old notions of development as focused principally on economic development traditionally understood. The concept is taking a number of distinctive trajectories. These suggest the importance of the concept as a means of organizing (or ordering) or as the language through which, New Era theory is to be applied to the development of comprehensive policy goals and for developing the language of applied Marxist theory in the current stage of 's historical development.

Thus, for example, it refers to the quality of production in the sense of a focus on innovation. That in turn is grounded, at least dimly on a rejection of the old notion that developing states must trudge through development cycles from the bottom of the value adding technological and production pile to the high-value added top of production chains. Leapfrogging tech has already worn off its novelty when applied to developing states. But its use here is meant to direct effort elsewhere, that is toward both a choice and a means of innovation. That touches both on emerging sectors and on the traditional Reform and Opening Up "China as the World's factory" economy. But new quality development focuses more comprehensively on a much broader--Leninist--conception of the objects and means of production. One produces things, certainly, and services. But one also produces the ideal worker, the best cadre, culture moving closer to a perfected ideal, and the like. It in in those takes that the innovation and production principles of this concept may produce a very different form of innovation. In this sense, everything from smart cities, to social credit regimes, to the better quality production of political and administrative services may also be subject to new quality production review.

It is in that context that Chinese organs traditionally focus on the textual or performative development of a new concept or a concept the refinement of which is given priority, by reference to the writing and other acts of the core of leadership, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. And thus this.

New Quality Development Theory: Snippets From Speeches and Writings of the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party: 习近平：开创我国高质量发展新局面 (Xi Jinping: Create a new situation for high-quality development in China)
https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/new-quality-development-theory-snippets.html

It is always useful to be reminded that as major liberal democratic states tend to their elections this year, Chinese Marxist-Leninist theory continues to evolve in areas that might be worthy of substantially greater consideration. Much of this, of course, was crystalized in the 20th CPC Congress. But the further development, and more importantly, the transposition of principle and ordering premises out from contextually specific Marxist-Leninism to forms ad applications of greater immediacy to developing and post colonial states ought to be taken seriously. One vehicle for that theoretical transposition is an old vessel now filled with new theory--but now new again: the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence. Much can be gleaned by a careful reading of the Beijing Declaration, distributed as part of the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the production of that doctrine.

The Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence as the Conceptual Lens of Chinese Marxist-Leninist (Socialist) Internationalism--和平共处五项原则发表70周年纪念大会北京宣言 [Beijing Declaration on the 70th Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence]

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-five-principles-of-peaceful-co.html

Some initial reflections on the publication of "Situational Awareness" and its context, from the conceptual side of things.

Snippets:

This past month (June 2024), the carbon encased consciousness self-identifying as Leopold Aschenbrenner published "Situational Awareness." It is meant to offer a roadmap describing "a" (but perhaps not "the") pathway toward the shaping of human interaction with the generative and virtual intelligence, silicon encased, and how that interaction will, in its dialectical mimesis, will reshape both. These visions from the pragmatic side of things tend to align with what may already have been anticipated from the philosophical side * * * . In both, cases a phenomenological semiotics--inductive, iterative, mimetic--and uncontrollable, in the way that Greeks understood hubris as a sort of lèse majesté in the form of a presumption toward the gods--suggests that there is no way to control the trajectories of human or generative consciousness as each is now compelled to "work" on the other, and that what follows will reshape both and the nature of the relations between them. * * *

With respect to what comes after, Aschenbrenner believes he can see at least the glimmerings of a possibility, or at least a process that makes predictive analytics of trajectories possible--though perhaps less so on the generative side (if only because he is not it). The strength of his belief in its analytics (at least with its repercussions on the human side) is strong enough to induce him to put his (and others) money where his brain is. For that reason along (though many would do it as a function of status and position within the human hierarchies of AI development), it is worth taking the journey with him, at least as far as he is willing to let us see. * * *

The situating of trajectories within premises of free will and choice, and the triumph of and its human collective responses ( competition, social organization, evolution of the political-economic model as applied, "human" or " " rights, etc.), as a consequence of the cascading limitations of choices (boxed into smaller spaces by time, space, place and perception of conscious possibility), still leaves open multiple pathways (as palatable or unpalatable they may be ). * * * That, more than the emergence of virtual "super" sentience, may be the hardest concept to grasp as , structuralists, prognosticators, planners--natural persons or generative intelligence--do what they must and plan for what they can, to their own advantage to be sure. * * *

Tragedy at Play--Artificial Intelligence and the New World Order: Leopold Aschenbrenner, "Situational Awareness"

https://lcbackerblog.blogspot.com/2024/07/artificial-intellence-and-new-world.html