Since 2008 Pacific Asia has been reconfigured as a region, with China as its center. In economics, China has been the central driver and partner in growth. In politics, China has become the central concern of its neighbors. China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s in 2000, and by 2009 it equaled the combined totals of Japan, ASEAN, and Korea. While this shows China’s demographic power, it is not simply a matter of size. Its per capita GDP is now at eye level with countries such as Malaysia and Thailand. China is again the major presence in Pacific Asia, with a majority of its population and its production. Re-centered China is quite different from premodern China. China and its region are now globally integrated, and its former, cautious thin connectivity has been replaced by assertive thick connectivity. China now tries to maximize win-win contact. However, the new asymmetries worry the neighbors. China’s challenges of integrating Greater China and avoiding hostility with Japan are vital for China’s global prospects as well as its regional stature.

There are several types of law degrees in Greater China but no simple way to compare them or work out whether a single law school will provide you with a good (moral) legal education. We explain what makes a law school morally good and what questions to ask your preferred law school. We discuss how to manage your mental health as a law student and lawyer, and how this is connected to Confucius’ teaching about the ‘superior man understanding what is right’. We discuss Davd Luban’s insight that lawyers’ careful moral thinking is critical to the future of law and legal practice. Because professional conduct rules can only rarely be applied without reference to context and circumstances, there will always be a need for lawyers to use an underlying moral framework or methodology, when they encounter new or challenging decisions. Four global approaches to ethical decision-making are introduced – consequentialism (similar to utilitarianism), Kantian ethics, virtue ethics and Confucian teaching. At the heart of each of these approaches is a commitment to integrity and, in those circumstances when it is required, to open candour and frankness, irrespective of self-interest or embarrassment.

This chapter discusses the changing local and global contexts in which Chinese (i.e., one or more Chinese languages or dialects) is being learned by multilingual youth and adults. Case studies of heritage- and non-heritage transnational learners of Mandarin in Canada, the United States, Australia and China illustrate the multi-scalar influences and enactments of larger geopolitical initiatives, ideologies, investments, and power relations in Chinese education and the many forms of Chinese-involved multilingualism(s) that can result. The chapter then explores how these and other factors shape learners’ identities, forms of agency, and linguistic histories as well as their trajectories and (sometimes fraught) subjectivities as multilingual Sinophones. The chapter concludes with a call for additional research representing a wider range of multilingualisms, raciolinguistic identities (especially among non-Anglophone learners), and migration histories and trajectories in Chinese language learning.