Our China Program

 Case Western Reserve and China

I just returned from a two week trip to China with Professor Jon Groetzinger, architect of our China program. And what a wonderfully successful trip it was! First, a few facts about our unique China program, and then a bit about the trip.

CWRU is one of a tiny handful of law schools that allows you (in fact we encourage you) to study abroad for a full semester. Most law schools have summer programs, typically taught by a combination of American and foreign teachers who teach courses that do or could appear in their law school’s regular curriculum. Here’s why we’re different:

Our China program puts you for a semester (or up to a year) in classes at one of the top ten Chinese law schools (ranked by the Chinese Education Ministry). You can study in Beijing at Peking University or Renmin University, in Shanghai at Fudan University or East China University of Political Science and Law, in Hong Kong at City University of Hong Kong, or in the west in Chongqing, at Southwest University of Political Science and Law (from which you can take the high speed train two hours to Chengdu and see the pandas in their natural Sichuan habitat).

Your classes will be taught by Chinese professors, teaching Chinese law, in English, for a full semester’s worth of credit. (Of course if you speak Mandarin, as some of our students do, more courses will be open to you.) And you will be well taken care of. The Chinese, warm and wonderful people, are famous for their hospitality. And when we visited with Case Western Reserve students studying in Shanghai and Chongqing, they couldn’t say enough about how well they were treated and the warmth with which they were welcomed. Chinese students mix easily with our American students, and our significant alumni LL.M. population (who attended our receptions in Beijing and Shanghai) are also there to help.

When you return, your marketability will be improved by conversance with Chinese law and, perhaps even more important, with a new cultural competence that is so important in almost every area of modern law practice. You may even speak some Mandarin (and courses are available to you at our partner universities, as well as at CWRU which will be offering an intensive four week summer Mandarin course for law students, lawyers, and business people). And you will also have experienced life in one of the most fascinating and important countries to the future of the world.

Our semester abroad program will probably affect you the most, but that’s not where our China program ends. We have agreed in principal with all of our partners to build a US-China Law Institute, a multi-university think tank populated with law professors, government officials, lawyers, and business people, to help foster mutual cooperation between our nations. Under the American-side leadership of Jon Groetzinger, and the Chinese-side leadership of Professor Deng Feng of PKU, this institute is designed to be the leading Chinese-American think tank on issues primarily relating to business, trade, and financial law. With the addition next fall of our new professor, Tim Webster, a rising star in the world of Chinese law scholarship, the institute is sure to be a big success.

If you’ve been to China, you know how exciting a place it is and, if you haven’t, you’re in luck if you come to Case Western Reserve and take advantage of our program. I’ve been going to China over the last half-dozen years at intervals of about a year and a half, and am amazed to find the transformations in the cities I know. Skyscrapers grow like bamboo (and supported by bamboo scaffolding), new planned financial and trade centers are rising, restaurants and night life are fantastic, the shopping will remind you of major US and European capitals, and the countryside is magnificent. Beijing, the stately capital city, is the home of wonderful treasures from the Imperial era, from the Forbidden City at Tian ‘an men Square, to the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Great Wall, and too many other places to name. Vibrant, exciting Shanghai, with its New York meets Vegas character, is to China what New York is to the US. And Chongqing is charming and beautiful (despite its population of 30 million!), reminiscent in places of San Francisco and Los Angeles with its ever-green flora, palm trees, and hills, cradled by the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. The countryside and smaller cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou outside Shanghai are simply treasures, and the landscape from Chongqin north and west toward the Himalayas (easily accessible from Chengdu) makes you feel as if you’re in a classical Chinese painting.

And, perhaps best of all (and ignoring US-China currency disputes), China remains amazingly inexpensive for Americans. Cab rides of an hour typically cost less than $15 dollars, public transportation within the cities and inter-city trains are cheap and excellent, you can have fantastic meals in nice restaurants for less than $50 for three or four people (or meals of terrific dumplings and buns for a dollar or two), and the shops that line the streets of the cities (where bargaining is the only way of doing business) sell a dizzying array of Chinese goods.

What other law school can offer this experience? None of which I know. Our China program is simply one other reason that Case Western Reserve is truly a special law school.