Faculty Scholarship Highlights 

Peking University Law School continues to champion innovative scholarship that links academic research to practical application, while introducing Chinese legal thought to readers around the world. Among the faculty’s notable contributions in the spring of 2026 were several influential books, 3 of which were published in English—each highlighted below.

Shifting Boundaries: A Global History of the Monroe Doctrine

  

About the Author:

Professor ZHANG Yongle is a tenured Associate Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Peking University Law School. Professor Zhang’s research focuses on public law and political theories, western legal and jurisprudence history, ancient Greek and Roman historiography, and modern Chinese constitutional and intellectual history.

 

About the Book:

 

This book delivers a Chinese perspective of the Monroe Doctrine. Departing from conventional studies that treat the doctrine as a static, self-contained Western concept, this work examines its discursive evolution, underlying spatial politics, and global entanglement with modern imperialism across different national contexts.

The book adopts a broad transnational framework to trace the doctrine’s cross-border dissemination and adaptive transformation. It first analyzes its shifting interpretations and practical applications within the United States. It further integrates Germany’s Großraum ideology and Japan’s pan-Asianism, illustrating how within a national context, the Monroe Doctrine may be used to advance geopolitical ambitions, thus resulting in a complex network of modern transnational political thought. Its most original contribution lies in uncovering China’s unique reception of the doctrine. Unlike the outward, hegemony-focused interpretations in the West and Japan, Chinese interactions have translated and reconfigured the doctrine as a justification for sub-state self-determination and internal autonomy, forming a distinct inward-looking turn absent in other national adaptations. Beyond historical analysis, the book engages critically with dominant Western-centric narratives about contemporary China. It challenges frameworks, including Lucian Pye’s “Confucian Leninism” and Henry Kissinger’s framing of China as a unique civilization-state, positioning China as an abnormal nation-state destined for hegemony. This book may be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers of modern international relations and global governance.

 

China’s Development Law: Theory and Practice

 

  

About the Author:

Professor ZHANG Shouwen is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Peking University Law School. His research specializes in economic law, fiscal and tax law, as well as social law.

 

About the Book:

This book stresses that confronted with a host of developmental challenges brought by marketization, informatization and globalization, it is imperative to safeguard and advance economic and social development within the framework of the rule of law. To this end, it advocates establishing a development-oriented rule of law and strengthening theoretical research on developmental jurisprudence. The work proposes rationally allocating developmental rights and fairly distributing developmental responsibilities between the state and citizens, as well as between governments and market entities. It also calls for timely responses to emerging issues arising from national competition and the growth of the digital economy in the new era. Furthermore, it elaborates on how to properly balance multiple intricate relationships: development and the rule of law, reform and the rule of law, government and the market, and central and local authorities. These efforts are intended to soundly sustain the steady and coordinated progress of economy and society, and ultimately fulfill the goal of national modernization.

 

An Introduction to Corporate Compliance 

 

About the Author:

Professor CHEN Ruihua is a Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Peking University Law School. His specializations include criminal procedure law, evidence law, and procedural jurisprudence.

About the Book

This book focuses on corporate compliance management. Corporate compliance management gradually gained traction across the globe in the late 20th century and was later introduced to China at the start of the 21st century. Initially adopted as an institutional arrangement for Chinese enterprises to respond to sanctions imposed by Western countries and international organizations, it has since been widely recognized by domestic regulatory authorities and evolved into a vital tool for comprehensive corporate governance. This book comprehensively reviews the origins, driving factors and development trends of corporate compliance. It conducts theoretical analyses on the nature, value, fundamental principles and evaluation criteria of effective corporate compliance. It also summarizes the approaches, procedures and practical techniques for enterprises to build sound compliance systems. In addition, it elaborates on three major compliance incentive mechanisms, namely administrative compliance incentives, criminal compliance incentives and international financial compliance incentives. As a theoretical monograph on corporate compliance management, the book mainly expounds on the core concepts, basic theories and practical methodologies in this field.