Research Projects

China's Foreign Related Rule of Law

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR): 1/2026 - 12/2029

China’s Foreign-Related Rule of Law (FRROL) is a long-term, comprehensive strategy that aims at upgrading and re-configuring Chinese domestic law to adjust its relationship with foreign legal systems and with international law. As set out in official CPC policy, FRROL serves the very broad aims of an integrated advancement of foreign-related legislation, law enforcement, adjudication, law observance, legal services, and talent training.

This project investigates how FRROL is translated into concrete legal instruments and how these instruments are applied by courts and administrative bodies. Rather than treating FRROL as a policy aspiration, we trace its effects on the ground by identifying what has actually changed in specific fields of law and what this means for China’s evolving position within the international legal order.

China’s growing legal engagement that reaches beyond its borders has important implications for Europe and the wider international community. New laws, such as those on foreign relations, data security, or countersanctions, already affect how states and businesses operate when dealing with China. By combining rigorous legal analysis with accessible communication, the project supports informed decision-making and contributes to a broader public understanding of China’s role in shaping global governance.

Prof. Dr. Björn Ahl, Dr. Daniel Sprick

Socialist Core Values in Chinese Courts

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG): 1/2025 - 3/2028

Since 2012 China’s party state has propagated a catalogue of twelve Socialist Core Values (SCV), aiming at their integration into every aspect of state activity, including the judiciary. In 2021 the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) issued a directive that ordered courts to cite these values in their decisions. This project investigates the various modes and channels of integrating SCV into the judicial application of law. For this purpose, we analyse the SPC’s efforts in translating policy directives into specific guidance for lower-level courts. We juxtapose this top-down perspective with an analysis of court decisions, in which judges cite SCV or litigants use them in arguing their case before the courts. The possible implications for judicial practice are multifaceted and range from mere rhetorical use or the consistent interpretation of law with SCV, to the arbitrary application of law and the evasion of legal requirements justified on the basis of SCV. We analyse the scope, functions, legal argumentative contexts, and the meaning of SCV that is attached to them in the process of judicial application. Further, the study focuses on the consequences of the use of SCV in judicial practice for the predictability and the autonomy of authoritarian law. The analysis of court decisions referring to SCV will enable a well-founded evaluation of a so far understudied development of the Xi era, which aims at a comprehensive ideological penetration of the legal system.

Prof. Björn Ahl, Dr. Daniel Sprick

Smart Courts - Disruptive Technologies in China’s Judicial System

Funded by the Excellent Research Support Program - UoC Forum: 7/2023 - 7/2025

This project proposal aims at establishing a cooperation between researchers from the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities on the digitalization of law and its impact on judicial practices. The focus of this project are the emerging ‘Smart Courts – 智慧法院’ in China, which employ information technologies, Big Data and AI for a broad range of issues in court organization, litigation practices, procedural matters and adjudication. These developments need to be understood against the complex sociolegal backdrop of China’s political system, its approaches to the rule of law and its legal culture, so that this project shall provide a highly contextualized analysis of China’s push for technological solutions in its judicial system. The overall goal of this project is to contribute to the ongoing discourse on the possibilities, risks and limits of the digitalization of law and legal practice by utilizing the Chinese experiences and approaches as informant and impetus for the nascent debate and developments in Germany and beyond.

Prof. Björn Ahl, Dr. Daniel Sprick, Prof. Martin Waßmer

The Social Credit System as a Challenge for Law and Courts in China

Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, funding period: 12/2019-11/2021

The Chinese social credit system is intended to systematically assess the trustworthiness of citizens in complying with law, moral norms and professional and ethical standards. Nudging through rewards and punishments, restricting access to public transport, hotels, educational institutions and social security systems shall induce compliance. The social credit system is designed as a comprehensive instrument of social control and a cure-all tool for societal ills that aims at upgrading the Chinese authoritarian system. The research project addresses three interlinked issues that are fundamentally transforming Chinese society and will have an impact that goes far beyond the Chinese state: (1) the rise of assessment systems of individual social behaviour that circumvent, supplement and change legal regulation as well as traditional law enforcement mechanisms; (2) the development of smart courts that are partially changing into automated decision makers through an increased use of big data and AI and (3) the legal regulation of social credit systems, in particular the legal protection of personal data.

Further details available at:

https://www.fritz-thyssen-stiftung.de/fundings/the-social-credit-system-as-a-challenge-for-law-and-courts-in-china/

Chinese Fundamental Rights Jurisprudence: Constitutional Development under One-Party Rule

Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, funding period: 9/2017-8/2019 Chinese scholarly discourse on constitutional development and the theory and practice of fundamental rights has been gradually changing from being dominated by concepts of rule of law and the constraint of governmental power to a discussion that focuses on 'constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics’ and rejects the previous cautious liberal reading of the written constitution as a symptom of ‘Western ideological hegemony’. This highly ideological debate goes hand in hand with an unprecedented official emphasis of rule-of-law rhetoric and far-reaching judicial reforms under the leadership of Xi Jinping. The current constitutional debate and its perception in Western scholarship on China, however, is not sufficiently informed by judicial practice, in particular the multifaceted ways in which Chinese courts implement fundamental rights and basic constitutional principles in their day-to-day practice. This project analyses and systemises the application by Chinese courts of laws and regulations that regulate areas falling within the sphere of protection of fundamental rights of the Chinese constitution. We investigate and categorise decisions in which Chinese courts apply the constitution directly and study current Chinese official and scholarly discourses on constitutionalism and the role of courts in constitutional development. Further, we will link discourses on Chinese constitutionalism with current fundamental rights jurisprudence in order to develop a sound theoretical framework that takes into account both theories of different schools of constitutionalism and court practice and contribute to the literature on courts and constitutional development in authoritarian regimes. Further details at http://www.fritz-thyssen-stiftung.de/foerderung/gefoerderte-vorhaben/projekt/pl/chinese-fundamental-rights-jur/p/1773

Chinese Immigration Law and Policy Reforms: Perspectives of Lawmakers, Administrators and Immigrants

Funded by the German Research Foundation, funding period: 6/2015–5/2018. The project investigates the transformation of Chinese immigration legislation and policy on the national and local levels by looking at the perspectives of state and non-state actors, including lawmakers, administrators and immigrants. We analyze the negotiation, implementation and enforcement of the new national immigration legislation and its local implementing rules with regard to different immigrant groups as well as immigrants’ responses to these changes. The project forms part of the larger research co-operation of European and Chinese universities focusing on the topic of Immigration and the Transformation of Chinese Society, which is funded by the relevant national funding organizations under the Europe-China Collaborative Research Programme on Understanding Population Change. Further details at http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/258454708

Global South Studies Center

Björn Ahl is Principal Investigator in the Research Area Citizenship and Migration of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC) that was established in 2014 as part of the German Excellence Initiative. Interdisciplinary research in the GSSC focuses on processes of mobility and exchange and on the resulting translocal connectivities. The Center provides a framework for linking China related research with global discourses and questions that go beyond the regional focus of Chinese legal culture.