Inside the ‘Red Circle’: the production of China’s corporate legal elite

Abstract This article examines the production of corporate legal elite through a systematic analysis of the profiles of the first three cohorts of partners in nine elite corporate law firms in Beijing. We argue that the social production of the Chinese corporate legal elite is primarily an outcome of domestic social factors rather than international factors. It is characterized by local elite recruitment from elite universities and endogenous elite circulation within the Red Circle firms. International credentials and work experience come only secondary to education and work experience in elite Chinese law schools and law firms for achieving elite status in the profession. Yet, international experience plays a role in promoting gender equality in elite professional service firms. This article contributes to the study of globalization and elite production in professional service firms by investigating how local and global forces manifest themselves in elite production in a major emerging market.</jats:p

China’s Pragmatic Approach to&nbsp;International Human Rights Law

China has adopted a pragmatic approach to international human rights law in&nbsp;the early 21st century, characterized by pragmatic experimentation in the appropriation&nbsp;and modification of human rights norms, selective decoupling of international and&nbsp;domestic human rights rules, and divergent enforcement in the legislative and practical&nbsp;responses to various human rights issue areas. This approach permits significant gaps&nbsp;between “law on the books” and “law in action,” as well as between domestic rules&nbsp;and international law. Analysis of China’s engagement with the ICCPR and&nbsp;CEDAW, respectively focused on criminal procedural rights and women’s rights,&nbsp;reveals the complex and uneven nature of China’s human rights governance. While&nbsp;China has gradually reduced overt violations of human rights within criminal&nbsp;procedures, it has concurrently developed a more opaque and institutionalized punitive&nbsp;system. In comparison, despite recent legislative advances, limited practical enforcement&nbsp;and increased state control on feminist activists characterize women’s rights protections&nbsp;in China. Understanding China’s pragmatic approach is crucial for effectively&nbsp;addressing human rights concerns within the country

Arrangements of the Inputs and Outputs in the Multi-Robot Continuous Control Problem

The Multi-Robot Continuous Control (MRCC) problem in Deep Reinforcement Learning requires a single neural controller (agent) to learn to control the behavior of multiple robot bodies. When learning to control a single robot body, sensors and motors are arbitrarily connected to the input and output layers of the neural controller, respectively, and this arrangement does not affect the learnability of target robot behaviors. If and how such arrangement can affect learnability in MRCC---when dealing with multiple robots with different body plans---is as of yet unknown. In this thesis, I demonstrate the following: (1) A neural controller can control a small number of robot bodies with an arbitrary arrangement of sensors to control inputs, and control outputs to motors for locomotion, which explains why arrangements can be ignored in this case. But such arbitrary arrangements do not work well when the number of robot bodies increases. (2) For a given set of robot bodies, some arrangements can make the MRCC problem easier. In certain cases, the variation in MRCC facilitation provided by different arrangements is pronounced. This fact holds both in bodies with parametric differences (e.g. short and long legs) and bodies with topological differences (e.g. differing numbers of legs). Arrangement thus provides a heretofore unknown optimization opportunity in MRCC: searching for arrangements that increasingly facilitate learning of a single policy for different robots

Law as a Sword, Law as a Shield

What does the rule of law mean in the Chinese context? Based on empirical research in Beijing and Hong Kong, this article examines the various ways politically liberal lawyers in China make sense of the rule of law in their discourses and collective action. Although the rule of law is frequently invoked by lawyers as a legitimating discourse against the authoritarian state, its use in practice is primarily for instrumental purposes, as both a sword and a shield. For activist lawyers in Beijing, the pursuit of judicial independence is nothing but a distant dream involving a restructuring of the state, and they therefore focus their mobilisation for rule of law around basic legal freedoms and the growth of civil society. By contrast, Hong Kong lawyers hold the autonomy of their judiciary as a paramount value mainly because it is a powerful defensive weapon against Beijing’s political influence. The rule of law as a shield is only effective where its institutional and normative foundations are solid (as in Hong Kong), and it becomes little more than a blunt sword for lawyers where such foundations are weak or missing (as in mainland China)