Carl Schmitt and the Evolution of Chinese Constitutional Theory: Conceptual Transfer and the Unexpected Paths of Legal Globalization

Abstract

The intense reception of Carl Schmitt’s writings among Chinese constitutional theorists is one of the more striking phenomena within the globalization of constitutional thought in recent decades. This paper approaches it from two angles. Firstly, the reception of Schmitt and the subsequent debates about his oeuvre and persona are interpreted as performative practices in which Schmitt soon emerged as both the bête noire of a liberal-leaning constitutional scholarship and an object of romantic projection for avant-garde theoretical endeavors. Engagement with Schmitt thus crucially contributed to the emergence of both a neo-conservative and a critical-liberal sensibility among Chinese legal scholars. Secondly, with the rise of what is known in China as Political Constitutionalism in the mid-2000s, Schmitt also began to exert a more substantive terminological and conceptual influence on Chinese constitutional theory more generally, leaving his imprint on some of its fundamental theoretical binaries. Looking at the Chinese debate on Schmitt, therefore, not only grants us a unique glimpse into how constitutional debates are structured and evolving in contemporary China, it also demonstrates the often-unexpected trajectories of conceptual migration in the global age