2023 GNC | Young Scholars Workshop and Closing Remarks

Young Scholar Workshop

This workshop aims to provide a platform for early career academics, selected from a competitive Call for Papers process, to share their latest research on issues critical to the global economic governance. More specifically, this panel will address some of the existential challenges for the international economic legal order including climate actions, national security, digital trade and public health. 

Speakers

Pallavi Arora is a Legal Consultant at the Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. She holds an LL.M. in International Trade and Investment Law from the Maastricht University (cum laude), which she pursued as a UM Holland High Potential Scholar. She also holds an M.Phil. in International Legal Studies from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and an undergraduate degree in law from Dr Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University. Previously, she worked as an Assistant Professor in Public International Law at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for WTO Studies. Her main fields of research include International Economic Law, with a focus on Intellectual Property Rights and Critical Approaches to International Law. 

Dr Xinyue Li is an Associate Researcher at School of International Law, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China. She obtained PhD in Law at Durham University, where she was also the Senior Tutor of Law, Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Deputy Director of Centre for Chinese Law and Policy, and Global Citizenship Programme Scholar at Ustinov College. She was a visiting PhD scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at University of Cambridge. Her research interests include international law, economic-security irreconciliation, and quantum legal theory. She can be contacted via email at m15000663015@163.com. 

Dr Xiaomeng Qu joined the School of International Law, Southwest University of Political Science and Law as a Postdoctoral Fellow in June 2021 after completing her PhDs at the Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney. Her current research focuses on international economic law, particularly international trade law, regional economic relationships and China’s regulations of data flows. Dr Qu is also a member of the China-ASEAN Legal Research Centre, School of International Law, Southwest University of Political Science and Law. 

TANG Yi is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, where she also obtained her MPhil Degree and Double Bachelor’s degree (BSocSc (Government & Laws) & LLB). Yi’s academic interests include international investment law and arbitration, dispute resolution, comparative law, and cross-border legal issues with a particular focus on China. Her works appear in both English and Chinese journals such as Asian Dispute Review, and Chinese Review of International Law. Her current Ph.D. research focuses on the tension between public and private interests in investor-State dispute settlement mechanism in times of public health crisis. 

Commentator

Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin. Assistant professor at FGV São Paulo School of Law (Brazil), and its Law and Development postgraduate program. Coordinator of FGV/SP Center of Global Law and Development, and of the WTO Chair in Brazil. Current director of the Red Latinoamericana de Derecho Económico Internacional and of the Brazilian chapter of the International Law Association, and founding member of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL). Recent awarded research scholarships: FAPESP 2018/00498-2; FAPESP 2019/08878-2; IPEA 0078/2020.   

Chair

Kun Fan is Associate Professor of UNSW Law and Justice's China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre. She was named Norton Rose Fulbright Faculty Scholar in Arbitration & Commercial Law in 2017 and received numerous awards in recognition of her academic contribution. She held academic positions at the Faculty of Law, McGill University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and was also a Visiting Scholar of the Harvard Yenching Institute (2012-2013) and a Visiting Scholar at Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy (SIDRA) (2023). She also has extensive experience in ADR practice, having worked as counsel, legal expert, secretary for the arbitration tribunal, arbitrator and domain names panellist, and deputy counsel at the ICC International Court of Arbitration. She is called to the New York Bar, an Academic Council Member of the Institute of Transnational Arbitration, a Domain Names Panellist of the HKIAC and the ADNDRC, an Accredited Mediator of the HKMAAL, and an Arbitrator of a number of arbitration institutions. 

Closing Remarks

Weihuan Zhou is Associate Professor and Co-Director of the China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre at the Faculty of Law & Justice, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. His research explores the most current and controversial issues in the field of international economic law, particularly the nexus between international trade law and China. His latest book (with Henry Gao), published by the Cambridge University Press, offers a thorough and systemic analysis of China’s ongoing reforms of state-owned enterprises and the ways to tackle China’s state capitalism under the world trading system. His work has been cited widely, including in reports of the European Parliament, the Parliament of Australia, US Congressional Research Services and World Economic Forum. He is currently co-Secretary of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL) and editorial board member of the World Trade Review and the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy. 

About CIBEL Global Network Conference 2023

Reshaping the Global Economic Governance: Opportunities and Challenges for the Asia-Pacific Region

Global economic governance typically refers to the institutional, policy and regulatory framework established by governments to facilitate and manage their interaction and engagement in global economic activities. As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a pressing need for governments to closely examine not only their own economic systems but also the global economic governance in light of the many new contexts. Numerous challenges lie ahead, including: the further rise of economic nationalism and protectionism, the persistent geopolitical confrontation between the world’s superpowers, the ever-greater fragmentation of the international legal order, the lack of progress in reforming key international institutions particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO), and difficulties and uncertainties in the pursuit of the shared goals of sustainability, inclusiveness and digitalisation. To address these challenges, international cooperation and communication is critical, with much of the collective effort increasingly focused on the Asia-Pacific region. Some recent and telling examples include the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP), the US-led negotiations of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), pioneering plurilateral and bilateral arrangements in the region such as the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement between New Zealand, Chile and Singapore and the Digital and Green Economy Agreements between Australia and Singapore, and the potential expansion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in the region and beyond. Understanding these and other significant developments, exploring potential opportunities and challenges, and strategically and actively engaging with the Asia-Pacific region, are thus of critical importance for reshaping global economic governance for the benefit of all stakeholders.

The 2023 CIBEL Global Network Conference & Young Scholars Workshop seek to promote academic and policy debate over the major opportunities for and challenges faced by governments in reshaping their own economic systems, as well as that of the global economic governance collectively, focusing on the role and impact of the Asia-Pacific.

See the full program here