China has been one of the most sustained areas of my academic work for more than three decades. My engagement with China began through formal undergraduate study of Chinese language, politics, history, society and economic development and developed into an interdisciplinary research programme encompassing law, political economy, sociology, public finance, institutions, business, history, language and culture.
Taxation has been a major part of this work and has provided an especially productive means of examining the relationship between the Chinese state, economy and society. It is not, however, the limit of my work as a China scholar. Much of my research has been concerned with larger questions: how Chinese society is organised; how formal and informal institutions interact; how China has managed economic transition; how central and local government operate in practice; how Chinese business networks function; how law is transplanted and adapted; how political authority affects institutional development; and how China’s increasing international importance changes institutions beyond China itself.
My approach to China is therefore deliberately interdisciplinary. I have studied China through its languages and history, lived and studied there, undertaken extensive field research, worked with Chinese government and academic institutions, participated directly in institutional reform projects, published extensively on Chinese institutions, and taught China-focused courses for more than twenty years.
Asian Studies and the Beginning of My China Scholarship
My formal specialisation in China began with my Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies at Murdoch University.
The degree provided a broad regional education rather than approaching China through a single discipline. My studies included Chinese politics, Chinese social history, contemporary China, Asian economic development and the political economy of East and Southeast Asia. This was accompanied by multiple compulsory units in Chinese language.
I studied in China at Hangzhou University in 1995. This was an important part of both my language education and my developing understanding of Chinese society. China at that time was well into the reform era but remained at a very different stage of economic, institutional and social transformation from the China that emerged over the following decades.
My academic engagement with China has therefore accompanied an extraordinary period of Chinese transformation. I began studying the country before its accession to the World Trade Organization, before the enormous expansion of its contemporary private sector and global economic influence, and while many of the institutional consequences of the post-Mao reforms remained unresolved.
This historical perspective has been important to my subsequent work.
Chinese Language
Chinese language study has been a continuing component of my China scholarship.
Mandarin formed a compulsory and substantial part of my undergraduate Asian Studies degree, including study undertaken in China at Hangzhou University. I subsequently completed further formal Chinese-language study at the University of Technology Sydney and the University of New South Wales and have continued to develop and use Chinese over many years.
Language study has been important for reasons extending beyond communication. It provides access to Chinese concepts, terminology, sources and ways of expressing relationships that are not always captured adequately through English translation.
This is particularly relevant to my work on Chinese social institutions. Concepts such as guanxi cannot simply be treated as exotic Chinese labels for phenomena already perfectly represented by English concepts. Their meaning arises partly from the social and linguistic environment in which they operate.
My later formal training in linguistics has reinforced this sensitivity to the relationship between language, concepts, culture and institutions.
Chinese Society and Social Institutions
A central theme of my China scholarship has been the organisation of Chinese society.
From my early research into overseas Chinese business networks, I became interested in the extent to which economic behaviour was embedded within family relationships, interpersonal obligations, guanxi and wider networks.
This eventually developed into the central intellectual problem of my PhD: what happens when formal institutions constructed around particular assumptions about individuals, organisations and property encounter a society organised partly through different social institutions?
My doctoral research drew extensively upon Chinese sociology, anthropology, history, economics, law and business scholarship. It examined the Chinese family and extended family, guanxi, business networks, informal assets and liabilities, enterprise organisation, relationships with government and the transnational character of Chinese social networks.
One of the propositions emerging from this work was that informal institutions should not necessarily be understood merely as temporary substitutes for deficient formal institutions.
Social relationships can have positive economic value of their own. Chinese networks can facilitate trust, information exchange, finance, business organisation and cooperation. They may therefore persist even where strong formal institutions become available.
This led me to a broader conception of Chinese institutional development in which formal and informal institutions continually interact and potentially transform one another.
Field Research and Ethnographic Work
A particularly important component of my China scholarship has been empirical field research.
I undertook extensive research in China involving direct engagement with government officials and institutions. This included fieldwork across cities and counties in Fujian and neighbouring Guangdong and further research associated with Fujian, Zhejiang and other Chinese settings.
The research allowed me to compare the formal description of Chinese government and law with institutional practice.
I was particularly interested in local variation. China possesses a powerful central state, yet the actual implementation of governmental policy can vary significantly between places and administrative institutions. My research examined how officials understood and performed their functions, how relationships affected administration, how local practices emerged and how formal national rules interacted with economic and social realities.
This work incorporated qualitative and ethnographically informed methods rather than relying exclusively upon legal texts, official publications or aggregate economic data.
It became fundamental to my understanding of China. Formal Chinese institutions cannot simply be read from legislation or central government statements. Their actual operation must be investigated within the administrative and social environments in which officials and citizens interact.
Chinese Government and Institutional Development
My China scholarship has also involved unusual opportunities to participate directly in Chinese institutional development.
In 2002 I worked through an Australian development programme with a small team engaging with senior officials of the Budget Affairs Commission of China’s National People’s Congress on reform of China’s taxation system. This occurred during an important period of institutional transition and included work concerning the reform of enterprise taxation. A substantial part of the reform direction with which I was involved was subsequently reflected in the development of China’s unified enterprise income tax system.
In 2005 I participated in another major institutional project concerned with the development of a Chinese Basic Tax Law. Working with a small group of Chinese and international specialists, I contributed to the preparation of recommendations and an actual draft law for presentation to the National People’s Congress.
The project went beyond technical taxation. A Basic Tax Law necessarily raised fundamental questions about the relationship between citizens, administration and state power: taxpayer rights, administrative authority, procedural protections, legal certainty and the extent to which government itself should be constrained by general legal principles.
I was also an Academic Exchange Visitor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and have held visiting positions at Xiamen University, including within its Department of Public Finance.
These experiences provided a perspective on China different from that obtained through external observation alone. They involved engagement with Chinese scholars, administrators and policymakers confronting the practical problems of constructing institutions during a period of rapid economic and social transformation.
Economic Transition and Development
China’s economic transformation has been a continuing focus of my research.
My initial Asian Studies education coincided with intense academic debate about the East Asian economic miracle and, subsequently, the Asian Financial Crisis. My later research followed China through a different but related developmental trajectory.
China raises difficult questions for conventional accounts of economic development. Its economic expansion occurred despite institutional arrangements that did not always correspond with models derived from established Western market economies.
This made China particularly important to my developing interest in institutional political economy.
Rather than asking simply whether Chinese institutions conform to an external model, I have been interested in what functions they actually perform. Informal relationships, decentralised administration, local experimentation and distinctive relationships between government and enterprise can sometimes compensate for formal institutional weaknesses while simultaneously creating other problems.
China consequently became one of the principal empirical foundations for my broader work on functional institutions: institutions should be evaluated not simply according to their formal appearance but by examining how they actually operate within a particular society.
Chinese Business and Enterprise
Chinese enterprise has been another major strand of my work.
My early research examined overseas Chinese business networks and the ways in which Chinese entrepreneurs organised economic activity through families, relationships and transnational networks.
I subsequently investigated the meaning of the enterprise itself within Chinese society.
Western law and economics frequently assume relatively clear boundaries among individuals, families, firms and property. Chinese social and business relationships can complicate these categories. Formal ownership may not fully describe economic relationships, while apparently separate businesses may be connected through family or guanxi networks.
My publications have examined Chinese enterprise, guanxi, business networks, informal economic relationships and the implications of these arrangements for law and government.
I have also studied Chinese investment and the changing environment in which Chinese enterprises operate domestically and internationally.
This work sits at the intersection of China studies, economic sociology, law and political economy.
Overseas Chinese and Transnational China
My conception of China studies has never been confined strictly to the territory of the People’s Republic of China.
My early work on overseas Chinese business networks demonstrated the importance of Chinese communities throughout Southeast Asia and beyond. Families, languages, commercial relationships and social networks can cross political borders.
This led me to investigate what might be described as transnational Chinese social space.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and the Chinese communities of Southeast Asia provide particularly important comparative cases. They allow related Chinese social and cultural institutions to be observed within very different legal, political and economic systems.
This comparison also provides a means of testing explanations of Chinese behaviour. If a particular phenomenon appears in mainland China, is it produced by Chinese social institutions, Communist political institutions, weak formal institutions or some interaction among these factors? Examining Chinese communities operating within different states can help distinguish among competing explanations.
This comparative and transnational perspective became an important feature of my edited volume on taxation in China and ASEAN and of my wider work on regional integration and economic development.
China, Southeast Asia and the Wider Region
China cannot adequately be understood independently of its regional environment.
My work has therefore extended into Southeast Asia and the interaction between China, Chinese communities and ASEAN states.
I have examined Singapore and Hong Kong particularly closely because their histories provide important comparative perspectives on Chinese economic and institutional development. Both demonstrate the dangers of assuming that culture, formal legal institutions or political systems independently determine economic outcomes.
My work on ASEAN has also considered regionalism and the tension between national legal systems and increasingly transnational economic activity.
China’s rise has progressively changed these relationships. A country that was still commonly approached as a developing and transitional economy when I began my research has become one of the central actors in the global economy and international political order.
That transformation has required my China scholarship itself to evolve.
Law and China
Law has provided another major perspective through which I have studied China.
My research has examined the transplantation and operation of legal concepts within Chinese institutional environments, administrative law and governmental practice, Chinese enterprise and investment, anti-corruption law, international law and the problems involved in interpreting and proving Chinese law outside China.
A recurring concern is the distinction between formal law and legal operation.
Legal rules do not implement themselves. Their effect depends upon administrative institutions, courts, officials, professional practices, economic incentives and the expectations of the people subject to them.
China provides an especially valuable setting for examining this distinction because formal legal development has occurred extraordinarily rapidly. The construction of legislation and legal institutions over several decades does not automatically reproduce the social and institutional environment in which superficially similar legal concepts developed elsewhere.
This work connects directly with my broader scholarship on legal transplantation, institutional functionality and rule of law.
Rule of Law and Administrative Reality
The rule of law has consequently become an important part of my China scholarship.
I have approached it not merely as an abstract constitutional ideal but as an institutional question.
What does it mean for law to constrain administrative behaviour? What happens when effective government depends heavily upon personal leadership or informal relationships? Can strong administrative capacity coexist with weak external constraints on governmental power? Can leadership substitute for formal institutional development, and if it does, what are the long-term consequences?
My collaborative work with Ian Murray developed some of these questions through research on leadership and institutional effectiveness.
China makes these problems particularly interesting because governmental effectiveness and legal constraint cannot simply be assumed to develop together. Building the capacity of a state to act and building institutions capable of constraining the state are related but conceptually distinct projects.
Corruption and Integrity
Corruption has provided another point at which my China research intersects with broader institutional analysis.
My field research exposed the importance of informal relationships within administrative environments, while later work examined anti-corruption law and the difficulties involved in applying externally developed anti-corruption concepts within the Chinese context.
I have been interested in moving beyond explanations that simply attribute corruption to deficient morality or incomplete law.
Corruption is institutional behaviour. Its prevalence and form are affected by incentives, relationships, administrative structures, enforcement, political authority, social expectations and opportunities created by the organisation of government and economic life.
China therefore provides a setting in which corruption can be examined simultaneously as a legal, economic, political and sociological phenomenon.
Teaching China
Teaching has been a substantial component of my China scholarship for more than two decades.
In 2003 and 2004 I taught Chinese Business Enterprise at the University of New South Wales. I was also a regular invited lecturer in Chinese taxation and business within Chinese Studies at UNSW over a number of years.
In 2004 I developed my own university courses dealing with Chinese taxation, investment law and the wider Chinese investment environment. I continued teaching this material annually at UNSW and, from 2016, at the University of Western Australia.
Developing and repeatedly teaching China-focused courses has required continuous engagement with China’s changing legal, economic and political environment. A course dealing with China cannot simply be prepared once and repeated. Over two decades, the country itself has changed dramatically.
My teaching has consequently developed alongside my research, moving from the problems of economic transition and foreign investment that dominated earlier periods towards the increasingly complex legal, institutional and international position of contemporary China.
China in My Publication Record
China occupies a major place in my academic publication record.
My publications have addressed Chinese social institutions, enterprise, guanxi and business networks, tax administration, economic development, institutional reform, corruption, rule of law, international taxation, regional integration, foreign investment and China’s relationship with the emerging international economic system.
My doctoral thesis brought many of these strands together through an extended examination of the interaction between Chinese social institutions and formal economic and legal institutions.
I subsequently edited a major collection examining China and ASEAN through local institutions, regionalism, global systems and economic development.
Other publications developed particular aspects of the larger programme: Chinese enterprise and the tax unit; tax evasion and administrative realities revealed through field research; guanxi and business networks in strong formal institutional environments; the changing enterprise income tax system; Chinese tax integrity within the international system; default assessments and rule of law; localisation of central taxation; anti-corruption law; and the consequences of China’s increasing importance for international legal and fiscal institutions.
Although taxation provides the empirical setting for many of these publications, their intellectual content frequently extends well beyond tax. They concern the nature of Chinese government, society, enterprise, law and institutional development.
China and the International System
As China’s economic importance increased, my research increasingly moved from examining how international systems affected China to examining how China itself might change those systems.
This is an important transition.
Much earlier scholarship on China implicitly treated international legal and economic institutions as established systems to which China would progressively adapt. China’s scale makes that assumption increasingly difficult to sustain.
My work has therefore considered the possibility of reciprocal institutional change: China adapts to international institutions, but international institutions may themselves need to adapt to the participation of China.
This issue has been particularly apparent in my research on international taxation, but the underlying question is much broader. It concerns how global institutions developed under one historical distribution of economic and political power respond when that distribution changes.
China is therefore important to my work not merely as a national case study but as an actor in the transformation of global order.
History, Culture and Contemporary China
My approach to contemporary China is strongly historical.
Chinese institutions cannot be explained exclusively through either traditional culture or Communist political history. Contemporary China reflects multiple historical layers: imperial institutions and social structures, nineteenth- and twentieth-century encounters with foreign powers, revolution, Maoist transformation, post-1978 reform, globalisation and the development of a modern state possessing unprecedented technological and administrative capacities.
My historical interests therefore complement my contemporary institutional work.
I am particularly interested in continuity and transformation. Which institutions survived revolutionary change? Which were reconstructed? Which apparently traditional practices are actually modern adaptations? How did Communist institutions interact with older patterns of family, locality and interpersonal obligation? How have marketisation and economic development subsequently altered both?
These questions make China a particularly rich setting for historical sociology as well as political economy.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to China
The defining characteristic of my China scholarship is probably its interdisciplinarity.
I first approached China through Asian Studies rather than through law. Language, history, politics, society and economics therefore preceded my later specialist legal and taxation research.
My subsequent work added law, public finance, sociology, institutional economics, political economy and empirical field research. Later study in linguistics, psychology and history has provided additional perspectives from which to reconsider questions that have occupied me since my earliest China research.
This means that I do not regard Chinese law, politics, economics and society as independent subjects that can always be adequately understood in isolation.
A Chinese legal institution operates through Chinese administrative and social institutions. Economic behaviour takes place through relationships among individuals, families, enterprises and government. Political authority affects the development of law and markets. Historical experience influences institutional expectations. Language influences the categories through which relationships are conceptualised.
China therefore rewards precisely the kind of interdisciplinary scholarship that has characterised my wider academic career.
My Work as a China Scholar
I regard China Studies as one of the principal and most established fields of my academic scholarship.
My engagement extends over more than thirty years and includes a degree in Asian Studies; extensive Chinese-language study in Australia and China; study at Hangzhou University; sustained research into Chinese history, politics, society and economic development; doctoral research centred upon Chinese social institutions; extensive empirical fieldwork in China; direct involvement with Chinese institutional and legislative reform; academic relationships with major Chinese universities and research institutions; a substantial China-focused publication record; and more than two decades of university teaching concerning China.
China has also been one of the principal environments in which my wider intellectual approach developed.
It taught me to be cautious about assuming that institutions can be understood from their formal appearance; that models developed in one society can simply be transferred to another; that economic behaviour can be separated from social relationships; or that law can be understood independently of the officials, institutions and communities through which it operates.
My China scholarship consequently extends considerably beyond a particular body of knowledge about one country. China has provided a setting through which I have investigated some of the central questions of my academic career:
How do societies actually function beneath their formal institutions? How do historical and social institutions interact with law, markets and government? How does rapid economic transformation alter those relationships? And what happens to both China and the wider world when a society with its own distinctive historical and institutional development becomes one of the central powers in the international system?
