This brief advances two main theses. Firstly, that the perception that China’s legal system deteriorated between 1998 and 2004 is incorrect. Secondly, that it is too early to conclude that China is trapped in transition.

As Minxin Pei has pointed out, senior Chinese leaders remain determined to maintain control over China’s massive banking sector, using it to accomplish a host of policy and political outcomes.

Jufang Wang argues that the threatened banning of the Chinese video-sharing platform TikTok on ‘national security’ grounds would undermine much-needed competition within the tech industry and lead to a more fractured ‘splinternet’.

This is the first book in English on judicial independence in China. This may not seem surprising given China remains an effectivelysingle-party socialist authoritarian state, the widely reported prosecutions of political dissidents and the conventional wisdom that China has never had independent courts.