Introduction to the Symposium on Legal Dimensions of Chinese Globalization: China and Global Health Governance

Abstract China has emerged as a champion of economic globalization, particularly through building global supply chains, financing overseas infrastructure and energy projects, and exporting labour to developing countries throughout the world. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), announced in 2013, is a keystone in China’s economic globalization. The BRI emphasizes connectivity: policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and ‘people-to-people’. Despite the broad significance of Chinese economic globalization, its legal dimensions are still poorly understood. China, Law and Development (CLD) is an international and multi-disciplinary research project that aims to study the legal and regulatory aspects of this stage of globalization. This symposium is comprised of articles by CLD research associates who investigate various questions, including labour rights, skilled migration facilitation, investment review, multilateralism, and patronage and clientelism. This article introduces the symposium, and it does so through the example of China’s role in global health governance. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic in late 2019 in China, which has since become a worldwide pandemic, has obstructed BRI connectivity through delinking global supply chains, blocking labour migration, freezing markets, and exacerbating Sinophobia. In response, China has sought to lead an effort in improving global health governance through participation in international organizations and strengthening its bilateral ties through health aid and technology export. The coronavirus pandemic may offer the Chinese an opportunity to lead a more circumscribed re-globalization, although China faces significant challenges.