Upon returning from China, it’s clear that the Chinese lawyers and everyone interested in law reform there take the internet seriously. There is a great deal of discussion about enacting enabling e-commerce legislation in China, and in growing the number of internet users exponentially in the next five years. Though there is Chinese government censorship, in all reality it doesn’t stop information from getting out and around China and the world. Enough people know how to use internet communications technology (ICT) to serve their purpose. And the Chinese lawyers, judges and government officials our ABF delegation spoke with all commented on the need for harmonizing the rules of law in cyberspace from the beginning of China’s internet growth phase. IBO is committed to work together with Chinese lawyers and lead the project to bring the rule of law to cyberspace and help shape the Online Justice System of the 21st century based on a global culture of colloration.

Last night, I used the SKYPE network to talk with Steven Huang of J & F PRC lawyers in Shanghai about joining and helping lead our China Committee’s e-commerce project. I met Steven’s partner, Scott Guan, in Shanghai in the next to last day of our People to People Rule of Law ‘exchange’ visit to China. Since we are both using SKYPE, we can collaborate for free and IBO now has a leading Shanghia law firm ready to work with us on harmonizing e-contract standards, cybercrime rules, and setting standards for digital identity and trusted online communities.

Truly, a combination of face to face networking, followed by collaborating using ICT, opens up possibilities for the world that will change it for the better.

While in Guilin, our Delegation was invited to be the guest participants at Guangxi Normal University College of Law’s “Forum on Legal System and Social Development.” Mr. Zhou, the President of the Law School led our delegation into the auditorium where we were given a warm ovation by over 300 students and professors in attendance. He stated that bringing American lawyers and judges to their school was important for the advancement of the rule of law in China. He emphasized that there are great differences between our legal systems and the training to become lawyers and judges. There are 400 schools of law, 600 colleges with legal majors, and degrees in law up to Ph.D. are offered. At Guangxi Normal, there are 800 undergraduate students majoring in the 4 year law program, and 160 students seeking advanced degrees. Unlike the US, one can choose to enter law school upon completing high school and passing the entrance examination. Mr. Zhou noted that China is passing laws every year as well as setting up the enforcement agencies necessary to build a culture of the rule of law in China.

Presentations were made by senior members of the ABF delegation, Jim Silkenat, Willis Whichard, and Steve Zack on the training of lawyers and law practice in the US. Afterward, there was a lively Q and A session from the chinese students. The most interesting question came from one of the chinese students who asked how the US can say it has a system based on the rule of law, when movies such as the Academy Award winning CRASH depict racial violence and lawlessness in the US city of Los Angeles. The delegation members who responded noted that the movie depicts some of the worst traits in American society today. The movie is about legal corruption and dishonesty in the police force against a complicated background of racial tensions in the US. That said, what is evident is that the movie offers the US society an opportunity to discuss its most troubling aspects of our legal system openly and work toward improvement. This is the mark of a legal system based on the rule of law.

Following the meeting, our Chinese national guides apologized profusely for the tough question, which most of us thought was a great question which gave us a chance to interact at a substantive level with the students. They pointed out that we should understand that Chinese people still have very limited chances to engage with westerners and that for these law students, their view of the American legal system has been limited to what they have read about it and watched on TV and seen in the movies. So the chance to engage in a professional exchange with US lawyers gave them the opportunity to ask questions that had been bothering them, but had previously had no chance to ask.

Questions about “No Child Left Behind” and the “Patriot Act” were also asked and answered. The chinese students wanted to understand our federalist system where the US government could set educational standards at a national level, while many people still believe in home rule at the state level. This tension between Beijing and the provinces also exists in China, it was noted. With regard to the Patriot Act, the delegation members who answered emphasized that the Act did not suspend the US constitution, and that individual cases arising under the Act would be litigated for years to come.

David Ravin, a US bankruptcy lawyer from our delegation, noted how fascinated he was by the chinese knowledge at a very detailed level of the US legal problems. It was mentioned many times that the Chinese are really building a system based on the rule of law since 1979 (after the Cultural Revolution). Again, there are slightly more than 100,000 lawyers in China, for 1.3 billion people. The US has 1.5 million lawyers for 300,000,000 people. The legal culture is ascending in China, not without its problems; but then again, as the Guangxi Normal law students pointed out to us, the US legal system has its problems as well.

All of us were thrilled with the opportunity to work together in the forum and hope to continue our exchanges in the months and years ahead.

The Chinese people are among the world’s most entrepreneurial. Whereever one travels, there is somebody offering you silk, jade, sculptures, paintings, almost anything, for ridiculously low prices. Bargaining is expected, and, prices drop by as much as 90%. Yesterday, our delegation took a trip on the Lijiang River - there were at least 30, maybe more, river boats in a queue, going down one of the most scenic rivers in all of the world. There are elegant hills, towering peaks, variegated cliffs and odd-shaped crags that reminded me of scenes from The Lord of the Rings! And, there were the ‘Hello People’ - all along the 4 hour journey, ladder shaped skiffs piloted by one or two Chinese, would come up along side our boat, hook up, and start yelling ‘Hello!” “Hello!” and wave different objects for sale. The only other words they spoke were - one hundred, two hundred; and the negotiations began. Only if you made eye contact did you end up in a negotiation. And, they were persistent as Chinese fans and sculptures were passed through the open glass windows, and Chinese yuan were handed back before the windows closed. The boat sellers were replaced by the marketplace people when we disembarked, and got on the jitneys to take us back to the bus. The jitneys idled for a few minutes to give the street peddlers the chance to say hello and sell us silk and pocket books.

In the end, I don’t know whether or not what we bought was the real thing or not. It really didn’t much matter. I think I spent $10 all together. It’s the experience of seeing and participating in this entrepreneurial culture. The small dollars should not lull the west into thinking that this is just a small time phenomena - look at the Taiwan experience to get a sense of the potential of chinese entrepreneurs. That is an island of 22 million people that went from owing substantial debt to the world in 1979 to having the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world 20 years later. There are 1.3 billion people in China.

And, if there is one difference I can tell between my time here in 2006 and the last time I was here in 1991, it is the number of chinese who are spending money. This is a country on the move.

The last time I was here in Beijing was 1991. I have a vivid memory of that time; if you can imagine the start to the Boston marathon, there are thousands of runners all crammed into one small street, and the line of runners seemingly goes on forever. Now, change runners to people on bicycles, all moving together as one force on narrow streets, and that is my memory. There were no high rise buildings, just low slab buildings; and, very few cars dotted the roads.

In 2006, there is a very different China. It is hard to describe the changes other than to say, imagine New York City with new high rises and new construction EVERYWHERE. The statistic is that there is more construction in Beijing than in all of Europe going on right now. The Chinese are extremely industrious, very entrepreneurial, and the pace of change is phenomenal. Of course, there are concerns of bad loans, real estate bubbles, environmental challenges, poverty, an aging population, and now, a very dangerous neighbor in North Korea - but none of that seems to phase the Chinese. They are moving ahead to raise the living standards of their people, and, the reports are that nothing like this type of change in this short a period of time has ever happened before in the history of the world.

I would like to briefly report on my first two days visits as part of the American Bar Foundation delegation led by Jim Silkenat and William Hubbard. On Wednesay, we were briefed by the US embassy, American Chamber of Commerce, and the United Nations Development Programme office. The first two meetings gave the delegates a flavor of the US perspective on the China market - unparalleled growth which is leaving the West behind, but growth at a pace that carried huge risks for Chinese society. In that risk calculus lies the opportunity for the West to build longlasting relationships that can reshape global politics. I felt that IBO’s philosophy of building a global culture of collaboration through working on projects that helped define the rule of law in a cross-cultural context were a perfect fit for this opportunity. During the meeting at the US embassy, Mark Cohen, the intellectual property attache, mentioned that that the growing use of the internet is very important both as a trade facilitation tool and a communication platform to support agreements on the rule of law in the area of intellectual property. The Chinese government has joined with the US embassy in IP roundtables to underscore this point and IBO will now offer our assistance. At the UN meeting, Khalid Malik, the UN resident coordinator in China, confirmed that the Chinese are doing amazing things in short periods of time, and that the West needs to keep this in mind when evaluating China’s progress in areas like the rule of law. The comments by Mr. Malik would present an appropriate transition from the US meetings earlier in the day, to the Chinese meetings scheduled for Thursday.

In the evening, we saw a performance of the Legend of Kung Fu. Undoubtedly, when the Olympic stage arrives here in 2008, the world will witness the same grace and power we watched in the story of Kung Fu’s enlightenment. Hollywood has its counterpart in China - and the Olympics may be a passing of the torch!!

On Thursday, the Director-General of the Department of Lawyers of the Ministry of Justice addressed our delegation in the morning and described the Chinese criminal justice system and then held a question and answer session. I was asked to be the Reporter of the session and will have further remarks later, after I submit my Report to the delegation chairs. I can summarize the meeting as follows: in the west, there are great reports of the failings of the rule of law in China. However, the Chinese point out that because of the Cultural Revolution, the legal system was decimated and had to start over in 1979. The progress they have made on the Rule of Law is since that time. There are 110,000 lawyers in China, though the figures vary since Chinese trained lawyers who take jobs with foreign law firms working in China may not be part of the count. That number may be as high as 30,000 lawyers. There are 35,000 senior judges and 150,000 additional judges in China.

After the morning presentation, the delegation went to the offices of and met with the leaders of the All China Lawyers Association. At that meeting, Steve Zack, former chair of the ABA House of Delegates, made the offer to set up a joint working group between the ABA and ACLA to further ACLA’s Commission on Safeguarding Lawyers’ Lawful Rights in Practice. This is a key point for moving the rule of law forward, as the ABA has always promoted the independence of the legal profession as a necessary condition for the Rule of Law. It seems clear that ACLA shares this goal. IBO met with the leadership of ACLA’s International Practice committee and agreed to develop further exchanges on developing a joint project on the harmonization of e-commerce laws.

In the afternoon, the delegation was split up and I joined the group which made a trip to the National Judicial College. Other members of the delegation went to a law school and the equivalent of the Chinese SEC. At the National Judicial College, where all of China’s judges are trained, we were briefed by the president of the school on the scope of their responsibilities. Then, we joined 200 senior judges from China to hear a presentation by 3 of the US judges in our delegation make a presentation on the selection, recusal and removal of judges under US laws.

Needless to say, there is a lot more than I have the time to write about now, but I hope to continue writing more in the coming days.

That was a long flight (-; from Boston to Beijing. Actually, it was 3 flights totaling 22 hours, with about 15 hours of layovers.

It is very exciting to be back in China after 15 years. Just the ride from Beijing international airport to the Marriott hotel hints at the incredible change taking place here. I would never have seen air conditioners 15 years ago; now they are ubiquitous. Starbucks is located in key places at both the Hong Kong and the Beijing airports, and I hear tales of Walmart coming over real soon. English translations are everywhere on signs - and that wasn’t the case in 1990.

The delegation I am with is part of the People to People Ambassador program; it is led by Jim Silkenat, past chair of the American Bar Foundation and it is officially called the Rule of Law program; we will meet with bar associations, judges, court officials and law firms in four cities, Beijing, Guilin, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Last night was our first. We were met by John Pomfret, the Washington Post west coast correspondent and author of CHINESE LESSONS. As an exchange student from Stanford in 1980, he lived in the dorms with chinese students at Nanjing University; in 1989, he was with the AP and in China during the Tiannemen square uprising - and, he was expelled from the country by the Chinese government, only to return in 1998 with Katherine Graham’s help as one of the Beijing bureau reporters. He credits the chinese people with an incredible will to succeed against difficult odds. He wonders how the governments’s desire to use the internet to help China grow will fare with all the censorship (30000 internet police!) and the deals they make with google, microsoft, yahoo etal to censor websites. In the end, he doesn’t think that the government can stop the information sharing.

In the evening, we heard from Melinda Liu, the Beijing bureau chief of Newsweek. She told us that we are in China at an incredible time; the government’s plenary meetings are taking place, and new leadership is knocking at the door. Also, with N. Korea testing a nuclear device, the country is very much on edge. She also mentioned that the internet is going to be a democratizing force in China. She noted that the rule of law is present in many instances, such as new environmental laws; but that it is the enforcement of laws, and the political corruption that still wins the day. Nevertheless, the voice of the people, helped by the internet, is giving rise to a new empowerment.

My latest statistics show that 111,000,000 people in China use the internet (2005); the official population of China is 1.3 Billion people. The median age is 33 years old, but getting older very quickly, something that is of great concern to the Chinese. That’s all for now.

We completed our second online bar meeting over a week ago, and since then it has been whirlwind of activity. Ayo Kusamotu, chair of our Africa committee has informed us that he is one step away from getting final approval for handling 10 pilot cases using online dispute resolution technology from the Nigerian court system. Ethan Katsh, our ODR leader and Cyberweek founder, immediately contacted one of the pioneers of the Cyberlaw age, David Johnson, at New York Law School to organize a group of law students to become virtual law clerks on the project. Our goal is to create an alternative to the backlogged physical court system with an online alternative that can be administered by Nigerian lawyers and judges who will be trained in the online alternative. I will update you on our progress.

In the meantime, Jim Silkenat, one of our board members, has organized a People to People Ambassadors journey for lawyers and judges from the US to meet their counterparts in China. We have meetings scheduled with the Ministry of Justice, the All China Lawyers Association, and the Shanghai Bar Association. Lingqiang Zhang, chair of our China Committee, and Joanne Franklin, worked very hard to prepare chinese and english presentation packages which I am taking with me to present to our Chinese colleagues.

Here is the english version of our letter of introduction which was written by Ling on my behalf -

It is with the greatest pleasure that I accept your kind invitation to attend your forum in China. I expect it to be an exciting, great assembly and hope for my counterparts in China to embrace a promising prospect. Please accept my sincere wishes for our further exchange that is to lead to the perfection of the legal system.
I am Jeffrey • Aresty, the chairman of Internetbar.org. I’d like to invite Mr. Chairperson and your organization to take part in our Internet bar Organization in expectation that the lawyers the world over can cooperate and communicate well on the newly added dimension —the internet and set up together an honest, democratic, equal and sharable legal community. Consequently, we will be able to regulate the globally acceptable conventions for our common cyber space and bring about the conditions for the cyber space arbitration, the impartiality of judicial recommendation and the effective procedural rules for each country and also train qualified cyber lawyers with the pool resources provided by the law society of each country.
In conclusion, I’m looking forward to your participation and eagerly expect to hear the voice from China, which is indispensable to our forum.

Mr. Jeffrey • Aresty