Behind China’s economic growth and slowdown: law and development in a global context

Mauro Barelli, Professor of International Law and Dr Tietie Zhang, Senior Lecturer in Law, both of The City Law School, have been awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for 2025.

Their project, ‘Behind China’s Economic Growth and Slowdown: Law and Development in a Global Context,’ will examine the role that law plays in China’s development strategies and evaluate how that critical relationship shapes China’s approaches to both domestic and international law.

The project will bring together a team of Chinese and European scholars from five jurisdictions, namely, mainland China, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. A major outcome of the project will be an edited collection entitled ‘Chinese Law in A Global Context’ to be published by Hart in 2027.

The project started in September 2025 and will be completed in September 2027. As part of the research project, a workshop will be held at The City Law School in the spring of 2026. Professor Barelli and Dr Zhang will also travel to China for a roundtable discussion later that year.

The project aims to make several important contributions:

• add to scholarly understanding of Chinese law in an innovative way, not only by providing an account of the key principles of Chinese public and private law, but also by drawing attention to the special relationship between these laws and China’s pursuit of prosperity
• by complementing an analysis of Chinese domestic law with an examination of China’s participation in international governance, the project should shed light on the relationship between China’s approaches to international law and its economic development
• foster a productive intellectual dialogue between Chinese and Western legal scholars, paving the way for a more cooperative future between the two sides.

In a joint statement, Professor Barelli and Dr Zhang said: