Author
Assoc Prof Hao Xiong
Organisation/Institution
Fudan University Law School
Country
CHINA
Panel
Legal Pluralism
Title
From Display to Discipline: Decorative Pluralism in State-Led Mediation on the China-Myanmar Border
Abstract
This article examines how state-led mediation in China’s southwestern borderlands manages the coexistence of social legal pluralism and state-led governance frameworks by producing decorative pluralism. Drawing on four months of multi-sited ethnography in Ruili and Mangshi, combining in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival research, the study shows that pluralism is not absent but carefully orchestrated: bilingual signage, ethnic motifs, and minority or Burmese mediators create an image of inclusivity, yet their impact on outcomes remains minimal. Diversity is displayed, selectively absorbed, and procedurally disciplined, functioning less as recognition of alternative legalities than as a governance technology. This dynamic recasts legal pluralism: rather than safeguarding heterogeneity, recognition becomes symbolic visibility without authority, converted into bureaucratic capital within a unitary legal-political order. By theorizing decorative pluralism, the article refines debates on weak pluralism, interlegality, and state absorption, and suggests that this logic is not unique to China but part of a broader repertoire of contemporary statecraft.
Biography
XIONG Hao is a socio-legal scholar of mediation and alternative dispute resolution at Fudan University. Educated at East China University of Political Science and Law, the University of Melbourne, the University of Hong Kong, and Harvard University (as a Fulbright Scholar), he works at the intersection of law, governance, and empirical research to analyze how conflicts are managed and institutionalized in contemporary China. He has published more than thirty peer-reviewed articles in leading Chinese and international journals, including The China Review, China: An International Journal, the Hong Kong Law Journal, and the Asian Journal of Law and Society. His major publications include four Chinese books—most recently Alternative Dispute Resolution: Origins, Techniques, Regulation (Law Press, 2024)—and one English book, The Mediation System of China from an Interdisciplinary Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2025). XIONG has served as principal investigator for a key project of the National Social Science Fund of China, as well as several provincial and ministerial research projects. His research has twice received the Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Award, and a policy brief he co-authored was adopted by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee with a positive instruction from a Politburo member. Recognized by China’s Ministry of Education as a “National Master Teacher of Online Education,” he teaches courses on negotiation and dispute resolution across disciplines, serves as a mediator with the Singapore International Mediation Centre, and acts as a Goodwill Ambassador for HIV/AIDS prevention with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
