Liang Xi, born in 1924, alias Liang Songyun, has been teaching at the Law Department of Peking University and the Law School of Wuhan University. He is the pioneer of China's international organization law and one of the earliest part-time lawyers of university teachers in the 1950s. He has repeatedly participated in the trial of major foreign-related cases of the Supreme People's Court.
On April 14th, the reporter walked into Wuhan University, a tree-lined, spring-filled school;. "Sakura has withered these days. Only a few sakura are still blossoming! Welcome to come!" Mr. Liang Xi, 92, chatted with reporters very easily.
Mr. Liang said humorously: "I have been a ‘teacher’ for lifetime, and I have concentrated on planting my "one-acre three-point land", intensive cultivation, and life-long, but I have no regrets."
In 1983, Mr. Liang returned to his alma mater, Wuhan University, from Peking University to teach a large number of international law professionals including specialist, undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral students, and published important monographs such as the International Organization Law. His personal destiny is closely linked to the fate of the motherland. His teaching and research work is closely linked to the role played by China in the international community.
From reading the private school to listening to the principal to explain the Tenth Lecture of Inequality Treaty
Liang Xi was born in an ordinary peasant family in Dongjia Village, Daqiao Township, Anhua County, Hunan Province. When I was 5 years old, I went to private school to study. After 3 years, I dropped out of school because of my impoverished family. Like many children in the old society, I became a "baby cow." But at the age of nine, because the father was illiterate, he mistakenly considered a bullish contract as a mortgage contract and pressed the fingerprint on it. An ox was taken away in this way. The matter was very irritating to him. He made up his mind to " continue to go to school!" Later, the parents finally reluctantly agreed to grit their teeth for the son to read elementary school.
In the bombing of the Japanese invaders, Liang Xi entered his middle school era. One inch of the mountain and a river of blood, where is still placed a quiet desk? But he still insisted on continuing to study hard. At the same time, he also appreciated the works of progressive writers such as Lu Xun and Ba Jin. In the second year of high school, he wrote and published many short stories and essays on anti-Japanese themes such as "Two Roses", "Fan Cheng Feng Yu", "Civilization and Savage".
In 1946, he was admitted to Wuhan University with a bloody essay "How Difficult to Develop" and outstanding achievements in various subjects, and chose the law as his lifelong professional.
At this time, Mr. Liang looked up and looked at the famous words of the "iron shoulders to enforce moral and justice, use ruthless voice to write articles" written by the president of the law school, ZhouGengsheng, on the wall of the law school's reception room, and fell into deep memories.
In the second year of his sophomore year, President Zhou Gengsheng, who served as a consultant to the "China Delegation to the United Nations in San Francisco", opened a course on international law for the law school, explaining in detail the shackles, pressures, influences and harms of previous unequal treaties on China. He said with deep affection: "Mr. Zhou's name has extraordinary charisma. The lectures have the demeanor of scholars, and they are plain and not false. The proof of Zhou's lectures and rigorous argumentation is fascinating. Especially The remarks about the China's unequal treaties have deeply felt that China's humiliating status of "weak countries without diplomacy" in the international community has evoked my painful memory of Japanese fascist atrocities in China, and further strengthened my study of international law. The profound thoughts, patriotic sentiments, noble personality and extraordinary charm of ex-principal , made me admire, decided to follow the teacher’s footsteps and embarked on the path of international law research!”
After graduating from Wuhan University, Liang Xi studied Soviet law at Renmin University of China. Since then, he has been focusing on international law for a long time and is teaching international law.
From "defending lawyers" of Americans to compiling UN materials
In 1953, Liang Xi was assigned by the school and was hired by Peking University to teach at Peking University and participated in the restoration and reconstruction of the law department. In 1955, he began to walk to the stage. Also in that year, the Supreme People's Court heard the case of "L.W. Cameron driving a US plane into Chinese airspace." He accepted the commission as a defendant's defense lawyer. "I accepted this task in that environment at that time. I had a lot of concerns. I defended the Americans who invaded our airspace. Why?" However, after thinking about it, he finally took over the "hot potato." He said: "As a defense lawyer, not to defend the American, but to safeguard the legal dignity of the People's Republic of China! We are a country ruled by law!"
In the middle of the "Cultural Revolution", Liang Xi was decentralized to the "Peking University Wuyi Campus" on the bank of Poyang Lake, and he also lived a life of "grazing and sunset". He said humorously: "Fortunately, not long after, I hid in a "air-raid shelter."
It turned out that in preparation for Nixon’s visit to China, Premier Zhou asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prepare information, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handed over some of the tasks to the law department of Peking University. Mr. Liang and Wang Tieya, Rui Mu, Zhao Lihai, Shen Zongling and other 7 people formed a compilation group. After years of division of labor and cooperation, translated and published six books including "United Nations and Disarmament", "United Nations Handbook", "Nixon: Six Crisis", "Heath Diplomatic Report: Old World and New Prospects", and compiled a large number of documents on international relations. It has important reference value for China's initial work after the restoration of legal seat in the United Nations in 1971, and has won praises from both home and abroad and the UN Secretariat. With this "air-raid shelter", he also compiled more than 2 million words of relevant materials and documents on the United Nations. "Later, all the manuscripts related to the United Nations and international organizations were eventually re-translated by me. Some of them know that I am very interested in this."
The reason why he is interested is because he has been keenly aware that international organizations will become more and more important in the future world, and China will play an increasingly prominent role in the United Nations. After the "Cultural Revolution" ended, he built a basic system for studying international organization law, and at Peking University took the lead in creating a new curriculum of "International Organization Law" in China's history.
Five revisions and reprint of the International Organization Law
"Give you a book." Mr. Liang presented me with a new book titled "The International Organization Law (6th Edition)". Two lines of characters are printed on the top of the cover: ‘Graduate Teaching Book ‘and ‘Recommended by the Graduate Office of the Ministry of Education’. The first edition of the book, published in 1984, was originally only more than 200,000 words. Over the past 30 years, after five revisions, it has now expanded to four hundred and fifty thousand words.
Some people have concluded that "Liangxi's research method is constantly revised." The gentleman said with a smile, "Really, the revised version is an upgraded version, which is to constantly deepen their understanding of this field and constantly reflect on their past ideas, thoughts, making it advancing with the times." In 1984, "Modern International Organization" was published, which is the first monograph in China that comprehensively systematically discussed "international organization law." Since then, the fourth edition of the International Organization Law has won the first prize of the outstanding work of the State Education Commission, and the fifth edition has been recommended by the Ministry of Education as a teaching book for postgraduate students in higher education. It is a rare academic product. In addition, the "International Law" edited by him has printed more than 300,000 copies and is one of the most widely published textbooks in international law. The two books, the International Organization Law (third edition) and the editor-in-chief of the International Law (1993 edition), are published in Taiwan in the form of traditional Chinese characters, which have academic influence.
Mr. Liang has published many papers with novel ideas and has important theoretical value. In particular, his "social foundation theory" and "structural balance theory" on international law, high-rise building, highly summarized the existence basis and development law of international law and international organizations, and deepened the principles of international law and international organization law. . Both of them are in the same line of jurisprudence and enrich each other, revealing the sociological characteristics and basic nature of the modern international legal order. Both are the academic starting point for his construction of the teaching and research system of international law and international organization law. He is also the theoretical premise that he always runs through his various writings and academic reports.
Teaching and educating people is the most important job of Mr. Liang. Since 1986, with the approval of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, Mr. Liang has begun to recruit doctoral students. Today, although he is over 90 years old, he still reads and reads newspapers every day, paying close attention to the international situation and the development of the United Nations, the European Union and other international organizations. He said: "In the era of increasingly organized, globalized and digitized human society, our international law education and scientific research work must be based on reality, facing the world and the future, and strive to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the Chinese dream! "(This article is from People's Daily)
