Editorial

• Pages: 4-5

EDITORIAL

This spring came with bitter pain. Many thousands of innocent people died in

northeastern Japan due to the dreadful tsunami and earthquakes. The radioactive

fallout from the nuclear plants in Hukushima spread dreadful fear throughout the

region. These multiple disasters have given us pause to seriously reconsider the

response by international governance to manage natural or manmade catastrophes of

such a horrific scale. They have also committed international lawyers of the 21

st

century

to develop better ways to cope with some of the most pressing questions of our time

such as global warming, natural/manmade disasters, incessant nuclear proliferation,

environmental damage, ecological disproportion, religious conflict, among others. In

order to carry out this mission, international law should be fully dedicated to the

principles of solidarityand tolerancethat lead to positive peacemakingbeyond

just loose cooperation. These concepts will be of fundamental in East Asia and

international law in the coming years.

The JEAILs Volume 4, Number 1 contains many articles of critical importance. The

current issue focuses on world climate change, which is one of the highly topical

questions in the contemporary world. Dr. Xiaoyi Jiang discusses the application and

development of the Clean Development Mechanism in China with her colleague.

Professor Osamu Yoshida has precisely analyzed the Kyoto Protocols compliance

system. His paper mainly touches on the procedural aspects of the international climate

change regime. Considering that the author is a Japanese lawyer, his examination of the

Kyoto system will be highly valuable to others in the field. Professor Yiyuan Sus paper

offers a broad and deep perspective of international climate change from a Taiwanese

standpoint. He criticizes that Taiwans limited statehood will prevent the world from

establishing the consistent and comprehensive action needed to curb climate change.

This issue also tackles the breath-taking expansion of the Pan-China economic

sphere from an international legal perspective. Professor Liang Zhang addresses the

regional trade agreement between Chinas four customs territories. His paper is quite

significant and controversial not only because it is one of just a few English legal papers

written by a Chinese lawyer on that issue, but also because his intuition of Chinas

economic sphere is quite Sino-oriented, even including Taiwan as a customs territory of

China.

In Regional Focus & Controversies, two authors from mainland China and Taiwan

offer differing positions over the historical and recently concluded cross-Strait ECFA.

4