Preface

This publication is based on the outcome of the sixth and seventh Annual Sino-Finnish Bilateral Seminars between the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS), Institute of Law and the member institutions of the Finnish Center of Chinese Law and Chinese Legal Culture (China Law Center). The sixth seminar in 2014 was hosted in Turku by the Faculty of Law of the University of Turku, and the seventh seminar in 2015 was hosted by CASS Law in Beijing.

In this volume, scholars from China and Finland have written articles about topical questions in different fields, such as developments in the rule of law, administrative law and labour law. However, this book should not be viewed merely as a collection of seminar papers. The articles reflect a shared interest in drawing legal comparisons in the connection between different fields of substantive law.

When the Finnish China Law Center was established in 2012, it was given the overall objective of developing and coordinating research and education in Finland on Chinese law and legal culture. From the beginning, the point of departure was to identify research areas of mutual interest. Collaboration between China and Finland in the form of Annual Bilateral Sino-Finnish seminars has demonstrated that these areas are easy to pinpoint. Sharing experiences from Chinese and Finnish perspectives helps us to better understand how law operates in its cultural and socio-economic context. Exchange of information and ideas has also enabled us to concretize our shared research interests in the form of six Finnish Academy-funded research projects, many of which have been successfully carried out in co-operation between CASS Law and Finnish universities.

Law cannot escape its global challenges. We have been witnessing a transitional period where economic reform in China has resulted in profound changes in the legal system. In the early stages of the opening of Chinese society little consideration appears to have been devoted to scholarly comparisons between different legal systems. However, the situation has changed in recent years. With the opening of Chinese society, growing interest in different regulatory models has paved the way to developing comparative law scholarship there. In Finland, too, a better understanding of globalization has resulted in a renewed emphasis on the need for comparative law to be more directly placed at the heart of internationally oriented research activities. Globalization has also reaffirmed our understanding of the relevance of cross-border, or transnational, legal rules, which are still largely under development. In this kind of context, comparative research may inspire new developments in law.

Put differently, comparative law belongs in the frontline of methods for tackling questions as to how to approach culturally different legal systems. Often, the roles and impact of similar legal actors-or seemingly similar legal provisions-can be strikingly different in different legal systems. In Sino-Finnish collaboration we have gradually been moving away from keeping solely to the level of legal rules and concepts to the cultural-historical context where law operates. This kind of research collaboration not only broadens our understanding of the legal world, but also enables a fresh insight to our own legal systems.

It is generally known that comparative legal studies have often played an important role in processes of transplanting and transporting legal models and ideas from abroad. In Finland, we have often emphasized that one of the purposes of maintaining comparative research with China is to learn from our Chinese colleagues more about their legal experience and solutions to global and local, or translocal, challenges. In the well-established Annual Bilateral Sino-Finnish Seminars, we have recognized a similar eagerness to learn about Finnishor Nordicsolutions in various fields of law.

All this underlines the importance of comparative material on topical legal issues made available through the present publication series of CASS Law.

Helsinki, 20 November, 2015

Ulla Liukkunen

Professor, Director of the

Finnish Center of Chinese Law

and Chinese Legal Culture