Chinese economic development, rule of law, and the Internet

Government Information Quarterly

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 393-417

  Perritt Jr , Henry H ^a   Clarke, Randolph R ^b  

^a CHICAGO KENT COLLEGE OF LAW   (United States)

^b NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040635272     PISSN: 0740624X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0740-624X(98)90033-8     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Andrew J. Nathan & Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China's Search for Security (New York: Norton, 1997) [hereinafter "Empty Fortress"]
2. Ibid.
3. Criminal Justice OnLine, September - October 1996.
4. See notes 43 to 47 and accompanying text.
5. Empty Fortress.
6. David E. Sanger, "Market Reform Irreversible, Chinese Leader Tells U.S.," The New York Times OnLine International (September 27, 1997).
7. Joint Statement of Jiang Zemin and President Clinton (October 29, 1997).
8. Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. Country Risk Report: China.
9. The World Bank Competitiveness Indicators.
10. Empty Fortress.
11. David Lague, "Beijing to Tighten Grip on Shaky Banks," Sydney Morning Herald, (November 14, 1997).
12. Sanger, "Market Reform Irreversible, Chinese Leader Tells U.S."
13. The White House Office of the Press Secretary, FACT SHEET: Accomplishments of U.S.-China Summit (October 29, 1997).
14. Richard H. Fallon, "'The Rule of Law' as a Concept in Constitutional Discourse," Columbia Law Review 97(1997). Professor Fallon explores four different conceptions of Rule of Law: (1) historicist, (2) formalist, (3) Legal Process, and (4) substantive (p. 5). He concludes that the most useful understanding of a rule of law combines aspects of all four conceptions.
15. th Cir. 1987) (differences in Belgian procedure from U. S. procedure do not justify refusal to enforce Belgian judgment). Article 14(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantees access to unbiased decisionmaker ("fair, competent, and independent") and to public judgments in civil actions, except when special circumstances justify excluding the public.
16. Mark C. Lewis, Note: "Contract Law in the People's Republic of China - Rule or Tool: Can the PRC's Foreign Economic Contract Law Be Administered According to The Rule of Law?" (Discussing areas in which legal reforms are needed), Vanderbilt Journal of Transactional Law, 30 (1997): 529 (noting shortage of published judicial decisions as an "institutional deficiency" in the Chinese legal system).
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., pp. 495, 532.
20. Ibid. p. 533.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 526. Lewis also suggests mitigating the need for specialized training of judicial officers by further splitting courts into those handling domestic legal disputes and those handling foreign economic disputes (p. 527)
23. Ibid. p. 528.
24. Ibid., p. 526.
25. Ibid., p. 527 n232.
26. Ibid., n232. Citing Gerald Chen, "The 'Civil Society' Is Expanding by the Day; Civil Rights on the Mainland," Window (Hong Kong, November 8, 1996). Available in 1986 wll2924330).
27. Ibid., n232. Citing Gerald Chen, "The 'Civil Society' Is Expanding by the Day; Civil Rights on the Mainland," Window (Hong Kong, November 8, 1996). Available in 1986 wll2924330).
28. See Ibid., p. 527 (noting advantages of arbitration of disputes with parties in China, but also noting that arbitration awards must be enforced and that sometimes Chinese courts delay enforcement).
29. See Ibid., explaining the OSI stack, as a model for thinking about different elements of information and communications services.
30. See Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Federal Electronic Information Policy," Temple Law Review (1990), p. 201 (describing stack of value added features); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Market Structures for Electronic Publishing and Electronic Contracting," in Building Information Infrastructure: Issues in the Development of the National Research and Education Network (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University and McGraw-Hill 1992); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Format and Content Standards for the Electronic Exchange of Legal Information," Journal of Jurimetrics, 33 (1993): 265.
31. See Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Federal Electronic Information Policy," Temple Law Review (1990), p. 201 (describing stack of value added features); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Market Structures for Electronic Publishing and Electronic Contracting," in Building Information Infrastructure: Issues in the Development of the National Research and Education Network (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University and McGraw-Hill 1992); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Format and Content Standards for the Electronic Exchange of Legal Information," Journal of Jurimetrics, 33 (1993): 265.
32. See Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Federal Electronic Information Policy," Temple Law Review (1990), p. 201 (describing stack of value added features); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Market Structures for Electronic Publishing and Electronic Contracting," in Building Information Infrastructure: Issues in the Development of the National Research and Education Network (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University and McGraw-Hill 1992); Henry H. Perritt, Jr., "Format and Content Standards for the Electronic Exchange of Legal Information," Journal of Jurimetrics, 33 (1993): 265.
33. "Historically, "retail" Internet service providers leased point to point telephone lines from their points of presence to transit networks to which they were connected through routers. At their points of presence, they provided multiple dial-up telephone numbers backed up by modems and terminal servers to aggregate traffic. Transit providers leased higher-capacity point to point telephone lines to link routers to which "retail" Internet service providers were connected. The Internet, thus, was layered on top of the telephone system and constituted a combination of routers, leased telephone lines, dial-up telephone points of presence, and associated organizational and human infrastructure to provide training, service, and maintenance. "Now, the Internet conceptually is more complicated for several reasons. Dial-up lines now often are virtual, constituting an entitlement to pass traffic through frame relay or SMDS connections with local exchange and interexchange telephone carriers. These connections often are digital and involve some packet switching. Thus, rather than sending IP packets over a simple electrical connection (in the case of a dedicated point to point line) or over an analog telephone circuit (as in the case of a dial-up line), IP packets often move over an underlying digital network using other kinds of packets or cells. "Second, the ways in which customers can access a "retail" ISP have become more complex. ISDN customers bypass modems and pass digital traffic directly into an ISDN switch and from there into a router for ISP. Increasingly, retail ISPs and telephone companies are arranging for the ISP to bypass the local office telephone switch for large customers, thereby giving the ISP the advantage of the unbundling of telephone service mandated by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, and reducing the likelihood of congestion in telephone company switches," Henry H. Perritt, Jr., Law and the Information Superhighway (New York: Wiley, 1998), §1.2A.
34. Level three (the network layer) includes standards for packetizing and depacketizing data in packet switched networks and also include standards for routing packets. Level four (the transport layer) includes information on reassembling packets and checking for errors. These two levels correspond roughly to the IP standard and TCP standard, respectively. TCP and IP arc the two standards or protocols that define the Internet.
35. See note 29.
36. China Telecoms 2000: Vol. 2 Fiber Optic Markets, Information Gatekeepers Inc.
37. Time International, "China Gets Wired" (January 11, 1998).
38. Motorola Press Release, "China Telecom Selects Motorola's Infrastructure or Its FLEX Protocol-Based Backbone Network" (September 24, 1996).
39. Motorola Press Release, "Motorola First to Successfully Complete CDMA Network Roaming Tests in China" (October 15, 1997).
40. China Telecoms 2000: Vol. 2 Fiber Optic Markets (Information Gatekeepers Inc.).
41. Milton Mueller & Zixiang Tan, China in the Information Age (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997).
42. "Orckit Wins Country-Wide HDSL Tender for China," Tel Aviv, Israel, Orckit Press Release (May 19, 1997).
43. See note 30 for a basic explanation of how the Internet "sits on top" of the telephone system.
44. Mueller & Tan, China in the Information Age.
45. The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was created in March, 1997, combining the functions of the Ministry of Electronic Information (MEI) and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MPT), former operators of Ji Tong, and ChinaNet.
46. Teresa Poole, "China Seeks to Make the Internet Toe Party Line," The Independent (London, January 5, 1996).
47. Mueller & Tan, China in the Information Age.
48. "China Issues Regulations To Control Internet," Newsbytes Pacifica (February 6, 1996).
49. Erik Eckholm, "China Cracks down on Dissent in Cyberspace," New York Times (December 31, 1997).
50. China Internet Corporation Press Release (www.china.com).
51. Lewis, "Contract Law...," p. 514.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid. Chinese practitioners think of the special courts as being limited to maritime matters.
55. Tsinghua is a major technological university analogous to MIT or IIT.
56. Chinese Renmin established a Legal Information Index Center 15 years ago.
57. Beijing University Law School has established a legal information network.
58. Lewis, "Contract Law...," pp. 513-514.
59. Benjamin P. Fishburne III & Chun Cheng Lian, "Commercial Arbitration in Hong Kong and China: A Comparative Analysis," University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 18 (1997): 306 (noting China's accession to the New York convention).
60. Ibid. pp. 303-304.
61. China agreed to accept the UNCITRAL arbitration rules in The China-United States: Agreement on Trade Relations (1979), 18 I.L.M. 1041 (1979), which entered into force in China on February 1, 1980.
62. Fishburne & Lian, "Commercial Arbitration in Hong Kong and China," p. 305.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 306.
65. Ibid., p. 305.
66. The parties to arbitration may specify whether the arbitration decision is public or private.
67. Latency refers to the transit time of information.