Last night I returned from a week and a half in China where I led a group of 38 students, alums and friends of Maryland’s Environmental Law Program on a spring break environmental tour.  On Tuesday March 13 we flew from Beijing to X’ian, a city in northwest China that has become a tourist attraction due to the buried terra cotta warriors.  When I first visited China in 1981 only a portion of the buried warriors had been discovered and the Chinese authorities did not permit any photos of the site.  Now there are two large structures covering the archaeologic sites and photos are permitted.

We spent Tuesday afternoon touring the city of X’ian including a climb to the top of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  X’ian is in the heart of Shanxi Province where more than a quarter of China’s coal is mined, most of it for export.  The coal-fired power plants in the province create highly visible pollution, which shocked some of the students and alums in our group, who had thought that the rare clear conditions in Beijing (caused by unusually high winds) indicated that China was making more progress in controlling pollution.  On Wednesday March 14 we visited the site of the buried terraa cotta warriors, which is located approximately an hour east of the city of X’ian.  After a raucous night in a karaoke bar in X’ian, our group left at 5:30AM on Thursday March 15 for an early morning flight to Shanghai.

After arriving at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, our group made a brief stop on the Bund where we viewed the incredible Pudong skyline during a slight drizzle.  On the next day -- Friday March 16 -- our group visited the Taikan Lu arts district in the French Concession and then we stopped at the Shanghai Museum and the Nanjing Road shopping district.  On Friday afternoon the group visited a Chinese law firm -- the DeBund firm -- where we participated in the firm’s weekly discussion session.  Wei Hu, an associate at the firm, had been one of the young CHinese environmental professionals who had participated in a workshop on U.S. environmental law that we conducted at Maryland last June.  When we arrived at the firm a training session was being conducted for young associates on recent developments in patent law.  AFter they made room for our group, we enjoyed an incredibly candid discussion of the status of the “rule of law with Chinese characteristics.”

There are now 14,000 lawyers and more than 1,000 law firms in Shanghai (Beijing has more than 20,000 lawyers),  The DeBund Firm has 44 lawyers , including 11 partners.  It currently is rated #36 in Shanghai.  The lawyers explained the difficulty of practicing in a legal system where the courts are “not so independent”. The National People’s Congress has just approved changes in China’s criminal code, which will make it somewhat more transparent.  The changes include a provision to legalize forced disappearances of people who are deemed threats to state security, hardly a change in policy, but one that has spawned protests for its interference with civil liberties.

Comparing U.S. and Chinese law, members of the firm noted that witnesses rarely come to court in Chine, despite courts asking them to do so.  The Supreme Court of China has ordered the country’s old specialty railroad courts to be integrated into China’s court system. Recently it has started issuing interpretations of various laws. While there is no  formal legal source for Supreme Court’s power to do this, its “Instructive cases” project was started last year.

The DeBund law firm specializes in intellectual property law, foreign direct investment and environmental torts.  The lawyers seemed frustrated that ConocoPhillips had received only a fine of 200,000 RMB for an oil spill in Bohai Bay.  While noting that there had yet to be a critical mass of lawyers practicing environmental law in China, the firm has handled environmental cases.  Disputes over siting new chemical plants usually are resolved not based on the law but on political power.  Localities eager to attract industry make required environmental assessments a perfunctory exercise and local officials try to pressure lawyers not to bring environmental challenges. Siting decisions for powerplants and new industries usually are made without consulting the public and there is little chance for lawyers to block them. Occasionally environmentalists win, but it usually is due to their ability to generate sufficient political opposition to a project, rather than due to enforcement of the environmental laws.

On Friday evening our group had a reception at the Maryland China Center, which initially had been established by the state of Maryland to help Maryland companies do business in China.  Jim Curtis from the Center noted that the Center now devotes substantial resources to helping Chinese companies create jobs by doing business in Maryland.  Our group heard a presentation from Zhenxi Zhong from Shanghai Root and Shoots, one of the few NGOs officially licensed by the Chinese government.  Roots and Shoots, a group initially formed by Jane Goodall, is working in more than 200 schools in the Shanghai area to improve environmental education.  After a final day of sightseeing in Shanghai on Saturday, we flew back to Washington on Sunday March 18.

A gallery of photos of our trip to China is available online at: http:gallery.me.com/rperci/100910.