By Jerome A. Cohen
I’m now in the process of collecting old photos for the purpose of my memoirs as well as a Chinese-language festschrift that my colleagues have been working on for my 90th birthday on July 1!
Here is a photo of the graduating class in the first one-year training program in law that any foreigners have ever offered in the PRC. Steve Orlins, Owen Nee and I ran it — in the Chinese language — as guests of the Beijing Economic Development Corporation (BEDC, the alter ego of the Beijing Economic Commission) whose leader, the marvelous XIAO Yang (肖秧), later became Party Secretary of Chongqing and then Governor of Sichuan Province.
The 30 or so city business officials who took part had never studied law before, needed legal education in their daily work and were released from their law-related jobs fulltime in order to give their all to our course. A few went on to study law in the US at Harvard, Berkeley and other places and later worked in Chinese and American law firms. Xiao, who became my best PRC friend, later made me formal advisor to Sichuan for purposes of attracting foreign investment.
China’s regular law schools were just reopening and did not yet welcome foreigners. We gave this nine hour per week course again for BEDC the following year, since our efforts were highly appreciated.
You will also see some unauthorized foreign auditors in the photo including my wife Joan and our three hirsute sons!