Staff profile

Ge Chen is Associate Professor in Global Media and Information Law (previously Assistant Professor) at Durham Law School. Before moving to Durham, he was a Research Fellow in Chinese Law at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Berlin). Having studied at the universities of Fudan, Nanjing and Göttingen, he received his doctorate in law from the George-August-University of Göttingen. He held the post of Postdoctoral Research Associate in Intellectual Property and Global Regulation at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL), and Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge, and remains an associate of the CIPIL. He was Visiting Academic of the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy (PCMLP) based at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS) of the University of Oxford. He was a Resident Fellow (Fulbright Nominee) and remains an Affiliated Fellow of the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School. He was a Konrad Adenauer scholar and research fellow at the Institute for International Law and European Law and the Sino-German Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Göttingen. He is a fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA).

Dr Chen's research interests are media and information law and their constitutional and rule-of-law aspects in international and comparative perspectives, with a focus on China. He is the author of Copyright and International Negotiations: An Engine of Free Expression in China?, a monograph published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 (“Cambridge Intellectual Property and Information Law” series). The book was featured in Harvard Law Review (March 2018) and presented at Yale Law School (YLS)’s 2017 Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference under the auspices of the Abrams Travel Fellowship of the YLS Information Society Project. His coauthored book on German constitutional case law has been published by China’s Law Press. His representative rsearch articles appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Global Constitutionalism, Journal of Free Speech Law, and Journal of Media Law. He received research funding from various regions and channels such as Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Germany/political), Le Club Informatique des Grandes Entreprises Françaises (France/industrial), Yale Law School (US/scholarly), and Chinese Society of International Economic Law (China/civil). He was nominated by the US-UK Fulbright Selection Committee for Fulbright Scholar Award in All Disciplines in 2021.

Dr Chen is committed to research-oriented teaching and is active in disseminating his research results through academic, professional and media outlets. He is a fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He teaches Chinese constitutional law, free speech in comparative and international perspectives, and UK media law at Durham Law School. He taught undergraduate and LLM courses of constitutional law, administrative law, and copyright law at the Göttingen Summer School of Chinese Law. He was a faculty member of the Anneberg-Oxford Media Summer Institute and the CIPIL seminar at the University of Cambridge. He participated in professional training of Chinese legislators and judges in Germany. He coached Jessup moot court teams and is regularly invited to judge in the international rounds of the Oxford Price Media Law Moot Court. He was invited to talk at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and served on the Scientific Advisory Board of Göttingen Journal of International Law. Besides, Dr Chen articulates opinions on a wide range of issues concerning China’s legal development, and has published articles in opinion outlets such as Oxford Human Rights Hub, Cambridge Core Blog, YaleGlobal Online, The Diplomat, ChinaFile, South China Morning Post, and Die Zeit. He accommodated media interview requests from the BBC, Bloomberg, Deutsche Welle, Foreign Policy, Reuters, The Economist, Times Higher Education, Weekendavisen, etc.

His viewpoint on China’s rule-by-aw strategy was adopted by the European Commission in its first ever country report in 2017 - the report based on which the European Parliament implemented important changes to its anti-dumping and anti-subsidy legislation (IP/17/5346). The same stance was also cited by the European Commission in its 2024 updates report on state-induced distortions in China’s economy (SWD(2024) 91 final). The endorsement of this viewpoint was echoed in Rand Corporation’s research report in 2022, commissioned by the US Pacific Air Forces. Upon completion, the report was cited in a testimony in the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Non-proliferation (July 2022). Authors of this report then submitted a written testimony to the US Senate Armed Services Committee (Feb. 2023). Based on this report, the US Department of Defense launched its new national defense strategy (Mar. 2023).

Dr Chen dedicates himself to public service and political engagement and has rich experiences of government consultation and think-tank work for more than a decade. He was consulted by Chinese and European governments on a variety of legal projects under the framework of the Sino-EU “Dialogue on the State of the Rule of Law”, especially with regard to constitutional dialogues, lawmaking process, and judicial practice in China. Among others, he advised the EU (e.g., European Parliament, European Commission, European Court of Human Rights), Germany (e.g., Bundestag, Bundesrat, Chancellor's Office, Ministry of Justice, Federal Constitutional Court), China (e.g., working bodies of National People’s Congress Standing Committee, Ministry of Justice, Supreme People’s Court), as well as other parliamentary bodies, governments, and courts in China, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

In 2016, How Germany Ticks (Deutschland.de), Germany’s official web portal hosted by the German Federal Foreign Office, listed him as one of five prominent “Chinese living in Germany” (Chinese version) for their “creativity and engagement”.

• Free expression in international and comparative perspectives
• Global constitutionalism and its development in China
• International copyright law issues related to free speech

• 2024: Cited by by the European Commission in its 2024 updates report on state-induced distortions in China’s economy:
• 2023: Cited in the US China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2023 annual report to the US Congress:
• 2023: British Academy Global Innovation Fellowship: shortlisted for awards
• 2022: Affiliated Fellow: Information Society Project, Yale Law School
• 2021: Resident Fellow: Information Society Project, Yale Law School
• 2021: Fellow: Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
• 2021: Fulbright Nominee: US-UK Fulbright Scholar Award in All Disciplines
• 2020: Fellow: Higher Education Academy
• 2019: Convener & organiser: 2019 Annual Conference of the European China Law Studies Association
• 2018: Associate: Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, University of Cambridge
• 2017: Cited by by the European Commission in its first ever country report:
• 2016: Listed as one of five prominent “Chinese living in Germany” for their “creativity and engagement”: German Federal Foreign Office
• 2012: Visiting Academic: Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policies, University of Oxford

Authored book

• Chen, G. (2017). Copyright and International Negotiations:An Engine of Free Expression in China?. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316681435
• Chen, G., Liu, J., & et al. (2015). 《德国联邦宪法法院典型判例研究•基本权利篇》(Studies of Classical Case Law of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany: The Basic Rights). (New ed.). 法律出版社 (The Law Press)

Book review

• Chen, G. (2021). INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CHINA. By Zhenqing Zhang. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 298 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) US$69.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8122-5106-7. Pacific Affairs, 94(3), 590-592

Chapter in book

• Chen, G. (2023). Constitutional Battles beyond China’s Regulation of Online Terrorist Speech. In M. Straub (Ed.), Straub, Marlene (Hg.) (2023): Der öffentliche Diskurs (59-71). Verfassungsbooks. https://doi.org/10.17176/20230215-110415-0
• Shi-Kupfer, K., & Chen, G. (2020). Datengetriebene Innovation vs. Schutz von privaten Informationen: Wie China mit Personenbezogenen Daten Umgeht. In Deutsch-chinesische Innovationspartnerschaft: Rahmenbedingungen, Chancen und Herausforderungen (Dowling, Michael et al.) (77-94). Metropolis-Verlag

Journal Article

• Chen, G. (in press). Can China Squelch Free Speech Beyond Its Borders?. Journal of International Media & Entertainment Law,
• Chen, G. (2023). The "Constitutional" Rise of Chinese Speech Imperialism. Journal of Free Speech Law, 2(2), 483-572
• Chen, G. (2022). How Equalitarian Regulation of Online Hate Speech Turns Authoritarian: A Chinese Perspective. Journal of Media Law, 14(1), 159-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/17577632.2022.2085013
• Chen, G., & Zenglein, M. (2019). The Global Faces of China's Incomplete Reforms: A Perspective from China's New Intellectual Property Regime. Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 17(4), 425-443. https://doi.org/10.1080/14765284.2020.1712886
• Chen, G. (2014). Piercing the Veil of State Sovereignty: How China’s Censorship Regime into Fragmented International Law can Lead to a Butterfly Effect. Global Constitutionalism, 3(1), 31-70. https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381713000282

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Chen, G. (2023). Digital Platforms Like TikTok Could Help China Extend Its Censorship Regime Across Borders. [The Conversation]
• Chen, G. (2022). Xi Jinping and China’s Censorship Trap. [The Diplomat]
• Chen, G. (2022). Constitutional Battles beyond China’s Regulation of Online Terrorist Speech. [Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional]
• Chen, G. (2020). Global Trade in Times of Coronavirus: Will the WTO Survive the Next Round of Sino-US Trade War?. [Public Jurist]
• Chen, G. (2019). Fighting Words: US and China Clash on Free Speech. [YaleGlobal Online]
• Chen, G., & et al. (2019). Chinese Censorship: A Global Export?. [TRT World Roundtable Discussion (TV interview)]
• Chen, G. (2018). How intellectual property and censorship have haunted a century of China-US trade talks. [South China Morning Post]
• Chen, G. (2018). US Free Speech vs China’s Censorship. [YaleGlobal Online]
• Chen, G. G., & Shi-Kupfer, K. (2017). Massenhaft Nutzer – mangelhafter Datenschutz. [Zeit Online]
• Chen, G. G., & Wong, T. G. (2017). Waiting for China’s Data Protection Law. [The Diplomat]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). Eine Metropole vom Reißbrett. [Tagesspiegel]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). Xiongan: A New City for the Xi Jinping Era. [The Diplomat]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). How Big a Deal is the New U.S.-China Trade Deal?. [ChinaFile, A ChinaFile Conversation]
• Chen, G. (2017). 专访：旅德华人学者眼中的两会 (Interview: The Annual Plenary Sessions of the State in the Eyes of a Chinese Scholar Living in Germany). [Deutsche Welle]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). TPP is Dead, Now What?. [ChinaFile, A ChinaFile Conversation]
• Chen, G. (2017). A chip of controlling free expression: why China wants to “trade” its copyright protection?. [Cambridge Core Blog]
• Chen, G. G., & Stepan, M. (2017). Ruling the Country by Red-letterhead Documents?. [China Policy Institute: Analysis]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). Le Droit, C’est Moi: Xi Jinping’s New Rule-By-Law Approach. [Oxford Human Rights Hub]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). A national supervision system: the CCP’s new permanent anti-corruption campaign. [MERICS Blog]
• Chen, G. G. (2017). China’s New Circuit Tribunals Allow Tighter Control of Judiciary. [Oxford Human Rights Hub]
• Chen, G. (2017). The Achilles’ Heel of Xi’s Legal Reforms. [YaleGlobal Online]
• Chen, G. G. (2016). Is censorship bad for business? How trade laws could break through China’s Great Firewall. [Asia Times]
• Chen, G. G. (2016). Why China relies on outsiders to get the inside story. [MERICS Blog]
• Chen, G. G. (2016). A Whitened White Paper on Human Rights. [Oxford Human Rights Hub]

Report

• Chen, G. (2021). China and International Law: History, Theory, and Practice. The Institute for Security and Development Policy, Sweden
• Chen, G. G., & Shi-Kupfer, K. (2018). Wie China mit Personenbezogenen Daten Umgeht. Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany
• Chen, G. G., & Stepan, M. (2017). Activating The National People’s Congress: Law-making on Behalf of the Party Center. MERICS, Germany
• Chen, G. G., & Shi-Kupfer, K. (2016). The Function of Judicial Reforms in Xi Jinping’s Agenda: Rectifying local governance through reforms of the judicial system. MERICS, Germany
• Chen, G. (2015). Intellectual Property Law and Freedom: between the national and the international. Cigref, France

Working Paper

• Yaniski-Ravid, S., Chen, G., Guttentag, A., Lessig, L., & Mason, C. Amici Curiae in Support of Appellant and Urging Reversal in the Case of Stephen Thaler v. U. S. Copyright Office in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (Case No. 23-5233) (2024)