Since 1999, the Paul Tsai China Center has initiated and steadily expanded collaborative projects with a range of institutions and individuals in China, including the courts, administrative departments, the legislature, leading universities, scholars, and lawyers. The Center’s current projects are focused on judicial reform, administrative law, policy and regulatory reform, criminal law and procedure, civil society and public interest law, constitutional law, and legal education. Our projects promote the Center's mission in a variety of ways.
- Exchange and cooperation programs in areas of law and policy help promote China’s reform process, increase understanding about China in the United States, and further improve China–U.S. relations.
- The Center’s cooperative projects with key legal institutions and reformers in China provide us with unique opportunities to observe and analyze developments in China’s legal and political system.
- An extensive program of publications, lectures, public testimony, and other outreach activities communicate our insights to policymakers, academics, and the broader public.
- The Center’s support of research and training deepens the understanding of the Chinese legal and political system while increasing capacity in the United States for effective future interaction with China.
Center faculty regularly teach at the Law School, with courses that are typically open to others in the Yale community. These have included courses in U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Foreign Policy and Law, a weekly workshop on China-related issues, as well as supervision of research projects of individual students. In recent years, China Center faculty have taught the Contemporary China Research Seminar at Yale Law School, in which students produce publishable, original research on issues of U.S.–China relations or Chinese legal reform.
In combining cooperative law reform projects with research and education in a mutually reinforcing way, the Paul Tsai China Center is playing a unique role, and its work has established a significant new channel between China and the United States.