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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A talk about my forthcoming monograph at UT Austin. Date and Time: Oct. 29, 2026. 2-3 pm, CT. Can virtually attend via webinar after registration (link: shorturl.at/Fw7tP) Title: Legal Professionals in a Confucian Society: The Qing Juridical Field in Late Imperial China.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Will give a talk at UC Berkeley on Oct. 23 about my forthcoming book. All are welcome if you're nearby. Excited about my first-ever visit to Berkeley Will give another talk at the University of Texas at Austin later during the same US trip. events.berkeley.edu/ccs/event/32...

events.berkeley.edu

Events at UC Berkeley

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

This is the link to a recently published article. My preliminary attempt to take stock of and reflect on existing scholarship on a set of interrelated, important, and often complicated issues in the field of late imperial Chinese legal history and governance. openyls.law.yale.edu/entities/pub...

openyls.law.yale.edu

Rethinking the Chinese Legal Tradition: Ideological Formations and Their Disputed Legacy

In a Confucian society like Qing China (1644–1911 CE), how often did people turn to the formal legal system to resolve disputes? To what extent did the empire become a “litigious society” despite the ...

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Reposted by Li Chen多伦多大学陈利

Taisu Zhang @zhangtaisu.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

It seems like, well, an opportune time to push this paper again. We find qualitative similarities in how the Chinese and American governments produce economic statistics, but even we couldn’t anticipate how quickly those similarities would strengthen…

vjil.org

The Law of Information States: Evidence from China and the United States — Virginia Journal of International Law

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Reposted by Li Chen多伦多大学陈利

Nianshen Song @nianshen.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Dear friends, I’m excited to share that my new book is finally out. The University of Chicago Press is offering a 30% discount for the book—just use the code UCPNEW if you’re interested. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... Cheers, and thank you again for being part of this journey!

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Haven't found the time to post here for quite some time while working hard to finish the book manuscript (noted above). At last, the book is close to completion and scheduled to come out next year from Cambridge University Press.

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Max Planck Law @maxplancklaw.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

The ‘China, Law, and Society’ Initiative hosts the online lecture on 28 November. Li Chen (@lchen2024.bsky.social) examines the emergence of a late imperial legal community and its role in shaping Qing judicial culture: law.mpg.de/event/the-ri... #InitiativeEvent

law.mpg.de

The Rise of the Qing Juridical Field and Its Impact on Judicial and Legal Culture - Max Planck Law

Drawing on the insights of prior scholarship, Professor Chen’s speech will inquire an expansive legal community in late imperial China and further challenge the once-dominant view in traditional histo...

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

This will be a terrific opportunity for early-career scholars of legal history, particularly those working on non-Western legal cultures.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Happy Lunar New Year to you all! May this year of snake bring you happiness, good health, and success in all your endeavors.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

An interesting followup. The Chinese government has agreed to send Vice President/Chairman Han Zhen to attend Trump’s inauguration ceremony—a gesture of goodwill and a "meet-in-the-middle" approach. Trump just had a seemingly positive phone conversations with Xi. It’s a wait-and-see situation now.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

For those interested, a virtual talk this Friday (in Chinese).

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Reposted by Li Chen多伦多大学陈利

Taisu Zhang @zhangtaisu.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

New paper posted to SSRN, a few more to come later this week. The primary claim in this one is that legality and authoritarianism can be politically and administratively synergistic. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

Legality and Legitimacy in Authoritarian Regimes

Conventional legal and political theory tend to assume that authoritarian regimes have an inherently uneasy relationship with law: that strong legal systems fun

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

When I read the news, my first thought was: Isn’t this just another way of currying favor with Trump by gifting him $15 million? How is this any different from bribery? :)

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

A virtual conference: "In Search of Early Chinese Empires: The Dynamics between Excavated Manuscripts and Transmitted Texts"; Easter Time: (1) 7:30 pm, Dec. 20-- 4 am Dec. 21; (2) 7:30 pm, Dec. 21-- 4am Dec. 22, 2024 Zoom registration link: notredame.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

mp.weixin.qq.com

12月20/21日国际学术会议：“寻找秦汉帝国：传世文献与出土文献的碰撞” (线下+线上）

12月20-21日秦汉历史国际学术会议：“寻找秦汉帝国：传世文献与出土文献的碰撞” （线下+线上）

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Typo: "Given Trump's love of personal diplomacy."

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

The reason offered for rewarding their persistence is also interesting.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

How dedicated were late imperial Chinese literati to the civil service exams? Many failed 10 times (about 30 years), but how old could they be? Even the emperors felt compelled to give honorary degrees if they failed again, say, in their late 80s, as seen in the 1852 request for a xiucai, aged 89.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Another NYT gift article, on another tactic China has borrowed from U.S. practices on int'l trade: ban on transshipment of exported products by foreign companies to a 3rd country (U.S.). The U.S.-China trade war may escalate quickly if Trump does go all in next year. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/b...

nytimes.com

China’s Critical Minerals Embargo Is Even Tougher Than Expected (Gift Article)

Beijing ordered companies around the world not to allow critical minerals mined in China to reach the U.S., while deepening its efforts to replace imports with domestic products.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

A chapter from the recently published Chinese anthology "Law, Knowledge, and Power in the Age of Empire," providing some critical reflections on the use and analysis of historical archives in the field of Chinese (legal) history. t.cn/A6mCvA2N

t.cn

方法｜陈利：“隐形档案”与史料深挖四步法

最近二三十年间, 欧美的人文社会科学研究领域中形成了一个所谓“档案转向” (archival turn) 的学术潮流。

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

One of my favorite books in the modern China field, not necessarily because we read chapters of her book manuscript in one of my first doctoral seminars at Columbia before it became an award-winning book :).

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

In the Qing period, these two-, three-, or even four-register page formats were used quite often in treatises on the Qing Code or forensic examinations (Xiyuan lu) due to their efficient and convenient allocation of the limited space, even in well-printed commercial editions for muyou & officials.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Pictures from the western end of "China proper" as famously noted by the Tang-era poet Wang Wei: "I urge you to drink another cup of wine/For beyond the Yang Pass, there will be no old friends."劝君跟进一杯酒/西出阳关无故人.The first one shows remains of the earliest (Qin-Han) Great Wall from over 2000 years ago.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

But the problem with ✘ may be precisely because it has too much political information, esp. all kinds of misinformation, as Trump and Musk like to call it :).

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

China has been surprisingly restrained in its responses to the many U.S. trade/high-tech bans and sanctions over the past eight years, possibly because the current PRC leadership does not want to add international crises to its already very serious economic woes at home.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

This is what I warned about before: Other countries, once they gain their competitive advantages, can and will borrow the U.S. playbook to arbitrarily impose trade or high-tech restrictions, also claiming "national security/interest" or "dual-use" as the pretext. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/w...

nytimes.com

China Announces a Ban on Rare Minerals to the U.S.

The move comes a day after the Biden administration expanded curbs on the sale of advanced American technology to China.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I should have mentioned this earlier (but was constrained by the word limit): these two registers include royal pets exclusively from the period of 1822–1850 (the Daoguang period).

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

This's a late 18th-century scroll painting of pets allegedly of the Qianlong emperor (Cf. www.burninghou.se/p/the-empero..., a link from@bokane.org). If the naming practice was true, Qianlong liked the Chinese character 狸 (wildcats/civets), but the names didn't sound more majestic or masculine.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

I came across these files accidentally, which are unrelated to my research interests. I saw no images attached, though some pictures of the royal pets have survived (probably of the emperors only). Here's one shared by a scholar following my post: www.burninghou.se/p/the-empero.... No name matches.

burninghou.se

The Emperor's So-Called Cats and the Manjurist Bat-Signal

Spoiler: The Qianlong Emperor's cats are (probably) fakety fake-fake-fake.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

A dog named 角端犼儿 held the longevity record (10 days shy of 15 lunar calendar years). 角端 (jiaoduan) is a legendary horned beast in Chinese mythology and 犼儿 (hǒu'er) is another powerful mythical beast. Combining the two in its name perhaps helped to counteract the bad fengshui in the Qing palaces :).

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Some royal dog names: 栀子Gardenia/喜姐Happy Sister/桃花: Peach Blossom/栗子Chestnut/玉狮子Jade Lion/喜豹 Happy Leopard/玉虎Jade Tiger/可怜儿Poor Little One/妞儿Little Girl 角端犼儿 Horned Mythical Beast Hǒu'er(15yrs) Some cat names: 玛瑙花横儿Carnelian flower branch/秋葵Okra/金橘Kumquat/墨虎 Ink Tiger/喜豹Happy Leopard/双桃儿Double Peach

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

correction: “These pets' names and life cycles"

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Besides some male royals, many court concubines loved pets because they often lived lonely lives for decades, with pets becoming their most loyal and often only reliable companions. These pet's names and life cycles might also reflect the circumstances of their lady owners, many of whom died young.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

1. How seriously did late imperial China's rulers treat their pets and/or job of archiving their everyday lives? Here're 2 registers from the No. 1 Historical Archives of the Qing royal family's cats and dogs (with names & years of birth/death). Two cats died after 9 years & one dog after 15 years.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

After twenty years of field work and digital collection, there are inevitably some intriguing or truly remarkable items in my collection that I may share from time to time, including interesting samples from a variety of legal texts and judicial archives from the Qing period (1644-1911).

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Another from the same site, illustrating a renowned genre (经变画) in Buddhist artworks & sculpture, transforming stories in Buddhist sutras into striking visual narratives. It skillfully merges religious teachings with vivid depictions of daily life. Many can be found in the Dunhuang caves in Gansu.

Sutra-based stories (经变画）-A section of the Dazu Rock carvings

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Titled "Law, Knowledge & Power in the Age of Empire," its first 5 chapters focus on the history of Sino-Western relations and early modern international law & politics. The next 5 chapters are about Qing China's legal culture & juridical field, plus 4 chapters on archives, teaching, interview, etc..

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Reposted by Li Chen多伦多大学陈利

Yang Zhang @profyangzhang.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

Join us for Yingyao Wang’s book talk next Friday EST. Zoom ID: 852 364 4345 Passcode: sociology

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

This looks quite different from another two famous Thousand-0hand Guanyin statues at Ningxiang, Hunan province, left below, and at the Summer Place in Beijing, right below:

Thousand-Hand Guanyin Bodhisattva) in Ningxiang, Hunan Province.

Thousand-Hand Guanyin (Bodhissatva) in the Summer Place, Beijing.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

The Thousand-Hand Guanyin(千手观音), of the same UNESCO-listed site, is a masterpiece of 12th-cent. Buddhist art. About 7.7m tall and 12.5m wide, this stunning work features hundreds of intricately carved hands radiating outward, each with an eye, symbolizing Guanyin’s compassion and wisdom.

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Li Chen多伦多大学陈利 @lchen2024.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

It measures c.31 meters (about 102 feet) in length, symbolizes Buddha's transition into death and the attainment of ultimate enlightenment; with intricately carved figures of disciples and bodhisattvas around, it shows the artistic excellence & religious significance of the Southern Song Dynasty.

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