Ling Li

Ling Li joined the Van Vollenhoven Institute of the Leiden University in the Netherlands in 2005 as a PhD researcher. Before that, she was a lecturer on international law at the Northwest University of Political Science and Law in China after having obtained her MA degree of international law from the same University in 2000. She had also studied European law in Europe in 2002. Her doctoral thesis investigates corruption, especially corrupt exchange or bribery, in China’s courts from the perspective corruption participants. It seeks to answer why corruption pervades and persists in the Chinese judiciary by examining the conduct as a trading process comprised of four phases. The methodology of the thesis is empirically analytical with a solid theoretical underpinning, which draws inspiration from the new institutional economics of corruption, classic corruption theories and pertinent established theories from various disciplines of social sciences. With its unique set of analytical tools and empirical data, the thesis provides a frame-by-frame animated reenactment of the conduct of corrupt exchange in China’s courts and explains its persistence and prominence. Meanwhile, the thesis also provides novel valuable insights into how the Chinese legal system and courts function or “dysfunction” in reality. The thesis, furthermore, offers a new analytical framework of corruption, which may be useful to analyze and diagnose corruption with more accuracy in any other sector in China or in different political, social and cultural settings. Her most recent publications include “Corruption in China's Courts,” in Judicial Independence in China: Lessons for global rule of law promotion, ed. Randy Peerenboom (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and “‘Performing’ bribery in China - Guanxi-practice, corruption with a human face”, which will appear in the Journal of Contemporary China, Vol.21, No.69, forthcoming in 2011.