Professor Samuli Seppänen (Chinese University of Hong Kong)

In the past few years Chinese political leaders and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideologues have become outspoken about the global significance of Chinese legal thought. Chinese commentary on the recently launched ‘Xi Jinping thought on the rule of law’ has adopted a particularly ambitious tone. According to CCP ideologues, Xi Jinping thought on the rule of law contributes ‘Chinese wisdom to the world for advancing the rule of law’ and constitutes ‘an epoch-making advancement in human civilization’. While Chinese ideological ambitions are growing domestically, it is a different matter as to how these ambitions influence the Chinese government’s ideological messaging abroad. China’s global ideological agenda also remains underexamined at the domestic level: are the increasingly ambitious statements about the global importance of Chinese legal thought an aberration or are they a consensus view supported by substantive legal theoretical arguments? This talk seeks to answer these questions by: (i) describing statements about the global significance of Chinese legal thought within China’s domestic legal discourse; and (ii) examining the actual and potential influence of such self-descriptions on Chinese efforts to advocate Chinese legal thought internationally. The methodology for this study is derived from discourse analysis and rhetorical theory. The rhetorical analysis of different genres of Chinese legal discourse reveals that statements about the global significance of Chinese legal thought are motivated, among other things, by an effort to legitimize CCP rule domestically and to signal the authoritarian and non-discursive nature of the Chinese party-state. Such arguments play an important role in domestic Chinese politics, but they are less persuasive on the global stage.