International Institutions as Forms and Fora: Rao Geping and the Law of International Organizations in China

Abstract This article examines the emergence and development in China of the discipline of international organizations law by specifically focusing on the scholarship of Professor Rao Geping, a founding figure of the discipline. Rao’s writings are read in light of his personal life and professional career as well as China’s economic and social reforms and its foreign policy. A communitarian, cooperative and legal approach to international organizations emerged as Rao’s choice. International organizations are seen mostly as fora for interstate deliberations and negotiations and are approached mainly from their procedural aspect and channelling function. What has been highlighted is a facilitative, procedural and instrumental conception of international organizations rather than an autonomous, functional or regulatory one. Rao advocates an inclusive approach to international organizations, which tends to include flexible, informal frameworks into the ambit of the study of international organizations. In constructing institutions as forms and fora, Rao’s writings effectively play a double role, translating the liberal, progressive ideas of international organizations into domestic international legal studies and facilitating China’s continuous economic reform and political integration into the international system. Rao’s scholarship presents an instructive example of how a scholar from a semi-periphery country may navigate various tensions and paradoxes behind universal concepts and negotiate their concept of international organizations.