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Jerome A. Cohen
Jerome A. Cohen
Jerome A. Cohen is a law professor at New York University, faculty director of its US-Asia Law Institute and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

CIA spy John Downey was freed by China 50 years ago. China scholar Jerome Cohen recalls how he got the US government to come clean about Downey’s status. Amid the tension over spy balloons, what does the case tell us?

Hong Kong’s courts are still clinging to their commitment to the rule of law and their role in assuring protection of individual rights against arbitrary state action. They are fighting an agile rearguard action, but the future is bleak.

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Among other aspects, Zhang’s case is distinctive for being the first formal prosecution involving the charge of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ to suppress a Covid-19 citizen journalist.

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Despite the coronavirus pandemic, liberal democracies and lawyers around the world must advocate for persecuted human rights lawyers in China, who are subject to arrests, prison sentences, disbarments and enforced disappearances.

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As often occurs in the ‘non-release release’ of China’s political prisoners, lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been confined in his old home after his release – ostensibly for quarantine – yet he remains under strict surveillance.

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Since 2017, at least four Taiwanese have been arbitrarily detained in mainland China and isolated from family and lawyers because of a breakdown in cross-strait relations. International pressure is losing effectiveness as China grows in economic clout.

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Their different colonial histories bequeathed to Hong Kong and Macau different legal heritages that influenced their populations’ expectations of the government.

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A citizens’ commission of well-known members from across Hong Kong society can provide the needed independent inquiry. There is no better option available, and the time left to prevent a deeper tragedy is running out fast.

Democracies across the world look at China’s judicial practices and decline extradition agreements with it. If Beijing wants such an agreement with Hong Kong, it should deliver the judicial reforms it promised long ago.

Amid the diplomatic row over the Huawei executive’s arrest and the two detained Canadians, Beijing and Ottawa are also being watched carefully around the world after strikingly different reactions to domestic law-related scandals.

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The self-taught lawyer's long-awaited and highly readable autobiography offers many insights into contemporary China as well as the thrilling story of his 2012 escape from police custody.

Over 50 years ago, when I began to study the roles of law in Chinese life, some American China specialists thought I had chosen the one subject that the "central realm" had never regarded as important.

For decades, China's communist leaders have admonished their cadres to "combine theory and practice". This is sound advice for any society. Yet, it is easier said than done.

We are entitled, 25 years later, to ask about the enduring legacy of June 4. Its immediate impact on China's legal system and civil and political rights was, of course, disastrous.