Gastvorlesung von Prof. Ryan Mitchell (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

This lecture examines how successive Chinese regimes have imagined, constructed, and contested the powers of the executive as part of a century-long constitutional project. Beginning with the Nationalist (KMT) government’s 1928 blueprint for a tutelary state, the talk traces how ideas about a strong, disciplinarian executive were embedded in the constitutional aspirations of Republican China, adapted and re-legitimated by the early PRC, and repeatedly reconfigured through political campaigns, state-building crises, and reform initiatives. It highlights the enduring tension between constitutionalist rhetoric and the practical drive for centralized authority, whether expressed through the party-state’s fusion of political and administrative leadership, the oscillation between collective governance and personalist rule, or the evolving legal manifestations for executive primacy. By weaving together institutional history, constitutional texts, and political practice, the talk argues that the pursuit of a strong executive power is a constitutive feature of modern Chinese statecraft that is in tension both with liberal ideals and with alternative models of authoritarian constitutionalism that are relevant in the Chinese context.

Ryan Martínez Mitchell is Associate Professor of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on public international law, comparative law, legal history, Chinese law, and Asian legal systems. His monograph Recentering the World: China and the Transformation of International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022), is a detailed account of Chinese discourses regarding and impacts upon international law based on extensive work with diplomatic and other archival sources in several languages. His current projects involve the comparative study of Global South experiences and agendas in international law, including those related to customary norms regarding the enforcement of international law, economic statecraft, and sustainable development. Professor Mitchell holds a B.A. in Social and Historical Inquiry from The New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. in Law from Yale University. He is a member of the State Bar of California and is currently an International Affairs Fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Veranstalter: Institut für Sinologie / Freiburg Centre for Interdisciplinary Constitutional Studies

Für weitere Fragen zu diesem Termin, wenden Sie sich gerne an Dr. Lucas Brang lucas.brang@sinologie.uni-freiburg.de.