This volume outlines a new approach for understanding China's treaty performance around international standards on trade and human rights, using the paradigms of selective adaptation and institutional capacity. Selective adaptation reveals how local interpretation and implementation of international treaty standards are affected by normative perspectives derived from perception, complementarity, and legitimacy. Institutional capacity explains how operational dimensions of legal performance are affected by structural and relational dynamics of institutional purpose, location, orientation, and cohesion. The author also offers policy suggestions for more effective engagement with China on trade and human rights issues.

Pitman B. Potter is Professor of Law in the UBC Law Faculty and HSBC Chair in Asian Research at UBC’s Institute of Asian Research. His teaching and research focus on PRC and Taiwan law and policy in the areas of foreign trade and investment, dispute resolution, property law, contracts, business regulation, and human rights. Dr. Potter has published several books, including most recently The Legal System of the People’s Republic of China (Polity Press, 2013) and Law Policy and Practice on China’s Periphery: Selective Adaptation and Institutional Capacity (Routledge, 2011). He has also published over one hundred articles and essays.

In addition to his academic activities, Dr. Potter is admitted to the practice of law in British Columbia, Washington, and California (inactive), and serves as a consultant to the Canadian national law firm of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. He is engaged in international trade arbitration work involving China and is on the panel of arbitrators for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission as well as several regional arbitral bodies. He has served on the board of directors of several public institutions, including the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada where he is currently a Senior Fellow. He recently chaired the APFC Taskforce Report, "Advancing Canada’s Engagement with Asia on Human Rights: Integrating Business and Human Rights" (2013).

Pitman B. Potter's profile page