Academic Visitor, Chair of Human Rights Law (Alexander von Humboldt Professorship)
Francis completed his doctorate (Dr. jur., magna cum laude) at Goethe University Frankfurt under Gunther Teubner, and upon Prof. Teubner’s retirement, under Roland Broemel. He holds an LL.M. from Peking University Law School, where he studied under He Weifang, and an LL.B. from China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL).
He has held visiting and research appointments at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (Center for the Study of Contemporary China, hosted by Prof. Jacques deLisle), the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, and St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. He previously held an Associate Researcher affiliation at the China Institute of Socio-Legal Studies, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Francis’s research examines how non-liberal states construct legal architectures that selectively engage transnational legal norms while neutralising their rights-protective dimensions — drawing on constitutional theory, the sociology of law, and comparative political economy.
His first monograph, Selective Coupling: China’s Legal Architecture and the Remaking of Law and Development (Brill, Law and Society in China series), argues that China’s legal development represents a novel form of party-state capitalism that systematically inverts rights protections into discretionary state-administered welfare. His current project at FAU CHREN, Selective Enlightenment: Legal Translation and the Sociology of Knowledge in Reform-Era China, examines how Chinese legal scholars after 1978 strategically absorbed certain European legal traditions while excluding post-1960s critical movements.
Before entering academia, Francis worked as a program producer at CCTV News Center, Beijing (2010–2016), collaborating with leading investigative journalists to produce documentaries on governance, civil rights, and environmental accountability that reached national audiences. During the same period, he was active as a public intellectual and legal commentator, translating foundational texts of Western legal theory into Chinese and contributing to public policy research on legal reform at various think tanks in Beijing. He publishes in English, Chinese, and German.
Monographs
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, Selective Coupling: China’s Legal Architecture and the Remaking of Law and Development, Brill (Law and Society in China series), under contract.
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, Selective Enlightenment: Legal Translation and the Sociology of Knowledge in Reform-Era China, Cambridge University Press (Law and Society series), in preparation.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, “Constitutional Pluralism Without Liberalism,” Transnational Legal Theory (under review). SSRN.
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, “Concealing Paradox: How China’s Party-State Capitalism Instrumentalizes Global Constitutional Norms,” Global Constitutionalism (under review). SSRN.
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, “Calibrated Autonomy and the 2026 Business Mediation Ordinance: Rethinking Legal Development in China,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly (forthcoming). SSRN.
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, “Selective Coupling as State Capacity: How Law Constructs Governing Capacity Through the Management of Contradiction,” Journal of Law and Society (under review).
- Mianzhi Francis Cao, “Human Rights Under Siege,” Human Rights Review (2019).
- Associate, Law and Political Economy (LPE) Collective
- Law and Political Economy Network, Law and Society Association (LSA); organizer, discussant, and presenter at LSA Annual Meetings continuously since 2016
- Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)