Prof. Ying Xia 夏穎教授
Assistant Professor
Director of Philip K.H. Wong Centre for Chinese Law
Biography
Ying is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law since 2020. She holds an LL.B., B.S. in Economics (dual degree), and LL.M. from Peking University and an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her dissertation drew on fieldwork in Kenya and Tanzania to study the socio-legal impacts of Chinese Belt-and-Road investment. As a socio-legal scholar, she investigates sustainability questions through empirical methods, developing two lines of research: environmental governance reforms in China, and the sustainability implications of China’s economic engagements in developing countries. Her work appears in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Transnational Environmental Law, World Development, China Quarterly, and Journal of Contemporary Asia. She has received Hong Kong RGC funding for projects on environmental legal mobilization and public interest lawyering.
Publications
“Guerrilla Lawyering: Mobile Resistance in China’s Public Interest Litigation” (2025) Law & Society Review.
“Environmental Advocacy in a Globalizing China: NGOs’ Engagement with the Green Belt and Road Initiative” (2024) 54(4) Journal of Contemporary Asia 667-689.
“State-Sponsored Activism: How China’s Law Reforms Impact NGOs’ Legal Practice” (2024) 49(1) Law & Social Inquiry 451-477 (corresponding author; with Yueduan Wang).
“An Unlikely Duet: Public-Private Interaction in China’s Environmental Public Interest Litigation” (2023) 12(2) Transnational Environmental Law 396-423 (first author; with Yueduan Wang)
“Quarantined Judicial Expansion: The Environmental Legal Entrepreneurship of Chinese Courts, Procuratorates, and NGOs” (2023) 45(2) Law & Policy 159-180 (corresponding author; with Yueduan Wang)
“The Janus Face of Stateness: China’s Development-Oriented Equity Investments in Africa” (2022) 162 World Development 106133 (first author; with Muyang Chen)
“Judicializing Environmental Politics? China’s Prosecutor-led Public Interest Litigation Against Government” (2022) 253 China Quarterly 90-106 (corresponding author; with Yueduan Wang)
“Chinese Investment in East Africa: History, Status, and Impacts” (2021) 19 Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies 269-293
“What Kinds of Chinese “Geese” Are Flying to Africa? Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms” (2018) 27(1) Journal of African Economies 29-51 (last author; with Deborah Brautigam & Xiaoyang Tang).
“China’s Environmental Campaign: How China’s War against Pollution Is Transforming the International Trade in Waste” (2019) 51(3) N.Y.U. Journal of International Law & Politics 1101-1178