Reimagining law
Xi Chao reflects on learning, innovation and the rule of law
19 November 2025
To Professor Xi Chao, corporate law is not just the study of rules about companies, their operations and transactions: it’s about much broader issues that affect the whole of society.
“Corporate law and governance, at its heart, addresses the fundamental question of how the state, society, corporations and individuals relate to one another,” says the Law Dean of CUHK. “The question of balance has intrigued me from the very beginning of my academic journey.”
His interest in corporate law can be traced back to the time when he studied for his Masters and PhD at UCL and SOAS of the University of London, where he examined the legal aspects of corporate governance in Mainland Chinese listed companies from a comparative perspective, focusing on critical issues like shareholder rights protection. He describes this period of deep, comparative study as “transformative”.
Trained first in the civil law tradition through his undergraduate studies in the Chinese Mainland, he found that immersion in the common law environment in London sparked new ways of thinking: “What struck me most was not only the differences between the two traditions [of common law and civil law] but also the deeper values they share,” he recalls. “That realisation continues to shape how I think about corporate law and governance, and more broadly about the role of law in society.”
Data mining for greater impact
Professor Xi was appointed Dean of Law last November. He joined CUHK in 2007, has held several leadership positions in the Faculty of Law, including Associate Dean (Research), and is internationally recognised for his scholarship in Chinese law, corporate law and governance, securities regulation, financial regulation and empirical legal studies.
His scholarship – which emphasises an interdisciplinary, empirical approach – has unexpected roots. A science student with a passion for physics and chemistry in secondary school, the young Xi carried his interest into his undergraduate years. “I spent more time learning C++ than I did on computer games,” he shares. “C++ may now be an outdated programming language but at the time it gave me a valuable grounding in computational thinking.” He became interested in exploring how a data-driven approach could generate insights in corporate law, securities regulation and the court system that were not readily attainable through conventional doctrinal methods.
This passion for and foundation in evidence-based inquiry would lead Professor Xi to examine the power of shareholders, a core topic of corporate governance – and discover new insights.
Shedding light on shareholder voting
While the conventional wisdom has been that shareholders around the world remain mostly passive and leave operational matters to executives, Professor Xi’s research, funded by the HKSAR Research Grants Council, paints a considerably different picture for China: investors in Chinese listed companies are becoming far more active and engaged in how those firms are run, exercising their right to vote to elect and remove directors, and have a say in major business decisions.
“What we found is that shareholder voting is not merely symbolic – they carry real weight. Shareholder votes have curbed potential abuses in transactions and pushed companies to operate more efficiently,” he says. “The shareholder franchise is becoming an important check within China’s capital markets. It is a force that is reshaping governance practice on the ground.” As shareholder engagement became a subject of global attention, his work, together with that of experts from 19 jurisdictions, was published with Cambridge University Press in the Cambridge Handbook of Shareholder Engagement and Voting in 2022.
Forging future-ready legal education
As Dean, Professor Xi does not see CUHK LAW as narrowly competing with other law schools; instead, he envisions a collective mission: “I believe we share a common responsibility to preserve, create and share legal knowledge in ways that strengthen the rule of law and serve humanity.” The priority, he says, is to equip students not just to cope with a fast-changing world reshaped by technology, climate change and shifting global dynamics, but also to help shape it for the better.
The Faculty will need to reflect on how best to adapt teaching and research in the face of those forces – from large language models to new patterns of cross-border economic activity.
A three-time recipient of the CUHK Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award, Professor Xi believes that teaching is also learning and that the classroom is an endless source of fresh perspectives and insights.
“Passionate teaching stimulates my own thinking just as much as it does my students,” he says. “At CUHK LAW, we work to create a classroom environment where students feel comfortable putting forward critical and innovative ideas, and where they are encouraged to defend those ideas with confidence.”
His teaching philosophy, he adds, is to cultivate intellectual self-reliance by creating a collaborative environment where students feel empowered to challenge ideas and build a foundation for lifelong learning.
Strengthening foundations for an innovative future
As the Faculty celebrates its 20th anniversary, Professor Xi’s vision rests on three pillars: providing students with strong foundations and agility, strengthening the impact of research, and remaining outward-looking through deep global partnerships.
Reflecting this forward-looking approach, the Faculty entered into a strategic partnership with Tencent in August, alongside other initiatives to promote innovation and collaboration. They will join forces to promote AI-related legal research, facilitate interdisciplinary engagement between technology and the humanities, and establish a career development platform for AI talent in the Greater Bay Area. The Faculty currently has a student body of over 1,500 students and is set to introduce a new Masters Programme in AI Law in the 2026–27 academic year.
“Through all this, one thing will not change: our commitment to the rule of law,” he affirms. “This is the very foundation on which CUHK LAW was built and it will continue to guide us in addressing the complex challenges that we know lie ahead.”
By Gillian Cheng
Photos by Stevan Yan
* For his further reflections on law, Hong Kong Lawyer, the official journal of the Law Society of Hong Kong, featured a related interview with Professor Xi in its October 2025 issue.
