Speaker: Tamar Groswald Ozery, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Panelists:
William P. Alford (moderator), Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law, Director of East Asian Legal Studies, Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, Harvard Law School
Rui Guo, Visiting Scholar, East Asian Legal Studies, Harvard Law School
Nicholas C. Howson, Pao Li Tsiang Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Mariana Pargendler, Professor, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School; Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (effective July 2024)
Meg Rithmire, F. Warren MacFarlanAssociate Professor, Business, Government, and International Economy Unit, Harvard Business School

In her new book, Law and Political Economy in China: The Role of Law in Corporate Governance and Market Growth (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Tamar Groswald Ozery takes a law & political economy approach to deconstruct the role of law in China’s market development since 1978.

Please join us for a book launch event featuring a panel of international corporate governance and China law experts. Professor Groswald Ozery, Professor Rithmire, and Dr. Guo will join Professor Alford in person. Professor Howson and Professor Pargendler will participate via Zoom.

Discussion will mainly focus on the role of formal law in governing markets during the “Legalized Politicization Era” (2010–present), the present era of market development in China. Covered extensively in the book, the present era reveals a shift in China’s political–economic equilibrium. The authorities over governing markets are being reconfigured to handle the consequences of prior era state capitalism. Such reconfiguration of market governance is achieved through the mobilization of legal institutions in two main directions: intensifying the presence of the regulatory state in the market and shifting substantial market governance powers directly to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Boxed lunch will be provided.

Tamar Groswald Ozery is an Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Previously, she was a Grotius Fellow (Michigan Law), a Research & Teaching Fellow (Harvard Law), and the editor of the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. Her published scholarly works focus on Chinese corporate governance, cross-border investments, and party-state market relations. She is a frequent commentator on China’s legal system, political economy, and global economic integration; and has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Prior to academia, she spearheaded the China department of a leading Israeli law firm.

William P. Alford (J.D. 1977) is Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is also Director of East Asian Legal Studies, Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and Senior Advisor for Graduate and International Legal Studies. His work on law and legal history in East Asia includes To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization; Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia; 残疾人法律保障机制研究 (A Study of Legal Mechanisms to Protect Persons with Disabilities); Prospects for the Professions in China; Taiwan and International Human Rights; and An Oral History of the Special Olympics in China.

Rui Guo (S.J.D. 2013) is a Visiting Scholar at the East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School. His research centers on the rise of Chinese State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) and their intricate economic, social, and political implications. He earned his S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and holds both an L.L.B and L.L.M from the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. Alongside his interests in corporate law, he also explores various legal education subjects in the United States and China, including disability law and AI ethics.

Nicholas C. Howson is the Pao Li Tsiang Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. He is a former partner of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP who worked out of the firm’s New York, Paris, London, and Beijing offices, and as a managing partner of the firm’s Asia Practice based in the Chinese capital. Professor Howson has spent many years living in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), both as a scholar and as a practicing lawyer based in Beijing. Professor Howson writes and lectures widely on Chinese law topics, focusing on Chinese corporate law and securities regulation, the Chinese capital markets, Chinese legal history, and the development of constitutionalism in Greater China. He acts as a Chinese law expert or party advocate in U.S. and international litigation and/or U.S. government enforcement actions. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a designated foreign arbitrator for both the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission in Beijing and the Shanghai International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission.

Mariana Pargendler will join Harvard Law School as a Professor of Law, effective July 1, 2024. She is currently a professor at FGV Sao Paulo Law School, where she coordinates the Nucleus of Law, Economics, and Governance (NuDEG), and is also Global Associate Professor of Law at New York University (NYU) School of Law. Professor Pargendler received a J.S.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a fellow researcher at the Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy as well as a research fellow at the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management. Her academic research focuses on the areas of contract law, corporate law, and corporate governance, from an economic and comparative perspective. Her papers have been published in renowned national and international journals, and she is co-author of the third edition of the book The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach (Oxford University Press, 2017), which has been translated into several languages.

Meg Rithmire is the F. Warren MacFarlan associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit at Harvard Business School. Professor Rithmire holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. Her new book investigates the relationship between capital and the state and globalization in Asia, comparing China, Malaysia, and Indonesia from the early 1980s to the present. The book, Precarious Ties: Business and the State in Authoritarian Asia (Oxford University Press, 2023), examines how governments attempt to discipline business and, second, how business adapts to different methods of state control. Her work also focuses on China’s role in the world, including Chinese outward investment and lending practices and economic relations between China and other countries, especially the United States.  

Sponsored by the East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia at Harvard Kennedy School.