Competition law recognizes two principal models of regulating the concentration of economic power, namely the American and European models. The American model prevailed, or rather was enforced, in the course of reception of the Western anti-monopoly law in the Far East. On the other hand, the European model was adopted in China – both the mainland and Taiwan – and in South Korea although elements of the other (American) model can be found in both countries. An answer to the question whether Western antimonopoly law and its interpretation have been successful in eradicating traditional Far Eastern vertical monopolies or horizontal structures determining the functioning of the economy seems to be reserved.
Foreigners in China always stood outside the local culture, including the legal one. Under imperial codification, justice to people of non-Chinese civilisations was to be administered according to their own customs. Already in early last millennium, Chinese introduced for foreigners so-called fanfang regime. Foreigners were concentrated in restricted areas, municipal districts or streets called fanfang. They were subject to their own jurisdiction there. Their national was appointed by the Chinese authorities to exercise the jurisdiction. Foreigners were treated as equals to the Chinese only when they were deemed useful to the local monarch. The opposite was true during the times of China’s semi-colonial status between 1842 and 1941 when foreigners took a position above the legal and general culture of China. The situation was reversed, therefore if the foreigners deemed a Chinese useful they treated him as equal.
The paper considers legal transplants and their launching into legal systems of countries in the Far East, namely China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam since 1868. The author follows the impact of individual foreign legal systems stemming from Continental Law (the German subsystem and the Roman subsystem) and Common Law. The impact of German law prevailed in the Far East countries listed above, but the influence of US law primarily in modern Japan should not be underestimated. The paper deals with the transposition of foreign patterns into the respective written law, i.e., law in books. In addition, it demonstrates through concrete examples how interpretation of the law in books developed, i.e., law in action, which quite often shifted the original European meaning closer to traditional East-Asian mode of thinking.
The Europeanisation process for criminal law still faces many challenges today. The first of them is the concept of state sovereignty in the matter of criminal jurisdiction. The European arrest warrant (EAW) exemplifies the successful Europeanisation of criminal legal procedure. The EAW has introduced a new principle of so – called, surrendering, to another Member State of the European Union, for criminal prosecution. Unlike extradition proceedings, the whole process of surrendering a citizen pursuant to an EAW rests solely with the courts. No review by an executive body is required, as it is presumed that, if surrendered to another Member State, the surrendered person’s rights – in particular, their right to a fair trial will not be jeopardised. The EAW, with its attending surrender mechanism, is thus a signifier of mutual trust between Member States.
The four decades of breath-taking political and economic changes in China raise a host of questions about the governance of this, in many ways unique, world power. The authors analyse the economic, political and historical context of the origins and operation of the present-day Chinese political model, the country’s legal system and the role of the Communist Party in the Chinese society, similar in many ways to the role previously played by China’s imperial dynasties. They also highlight the new trends in Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy of the late 2010s, which bear witness to a sustained effort of the Chinese political leadership to enhance China’s great-power status on the global stage.
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