For
decades, China's communist leaders have admonished their cadres to
"combine theory and practice". This is sound advice for any society.
Yet, it is easier said than done. This perennial challenge now confronts the
party's Central Committee as it prepares to convene the highly anticipated
fourth plenary session in October.
Party propaganda organs are
trumpeting the fact that, for the first time in the party's long history,
issues relating to the rule of law will be the main topic of a major party
conference. This meeting promises to be the culmination of a development that
was launched almost two years ago at the 18th party congress and put into high
gear when the Central Committee issued an ambitious reform decision a year
later. It pledged to "accelerate the building of a just, efficient and
authoritative socialist judicial system to safeguard the people's rights and
interests, and ensure that the people are satisfied with the equality and
justice in every court verdict".
The decision further gave
such abstract goals detailed definition, promising to "promote the rule of
law" by enforcing constitutional rights, improving government administration,
strengthening the independent exercise of judicial and procuratorial power, and
protecting human rights, especially those rights central to criminal justice.
It emphasised legal prohibitions against torture and illegally obtained
evidence and urged preventing and correcting wrongful convictions. It also
endorsed "giving full play to the important role of lawyers in
safeguarding the legal rights and interests of citizens and legal persons in
accordance with law".
This admirable agenda would
do any country proud. Heaven is indeed wonderful. The key, however, is how to
get there.
Party leaders and their
legal advisers have been struggling with the problem of how to achieve the rule
of law for many years. Now, they claim, the fourth plenum will "provide a
road map" that will "flesh out" the goals set forth in the
decision so that, as the former director of research at the Supreme People's
Court recently stated, "you can both 'see and feel' the rule of law".
Moreover, some party experts
are advocating not merely "governing the country according to law"
but also subjecting the government and the party themselves to constitutional
and legislative constraints.
Yet, on the very same day
the Politburo confirmed that the fourth plenum would concentrate on the rule of
law, it also confirmed that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
would soon complete its investigation of the once extremely powerful Zhou
Yongkang . This is widely interpreted to mean that the commission will soon
recommend to the Politburo that Zhou himself, a former public security minister
and member of the Politburo Standing Committee, be prosecuted.
The timing of this
long-awaited action against one of the country's highest former leaders,
unprecedented since the trial of the Gang of Four a generation ago, was
obviously designed to demonstrate that, in its battle against massive
corruption, China's new leadership is determined to practise, not merely
preach, one of the fundamental precepts of the rule of law - equality of
everyone before the law. As Professor Feng Lixia of the Central Party School
promptly claimed, the move against Zhou "means that there is no such legal
blind spot where 'the lords are not subject to criminal punishment'".
Many people inside and
outside China, however, understand the Zhou case as an immediate, living
refutation of the rule of law principles that the party is currently touting to
the country and the world. If indeed there is now "equal justice",
they ask, why is it that many other leaders suspected of corrupt relations are
also not being subjected to confinement and investigation in accordance with
the party's frightening shuanggui procedures? How can those disciplinary
inspection procedures - the customary prerequisite to criminal prosecution of
party members - possibly be consistent with the constitution and the Criminal
Procedure Law?
Zhou has apparently been
detained incommunicado for many months without family, friends, legal advice or
judicial scrutiny. Although, as a former "lord" he has probably not
been subjected to physical abuse, he has certainly suffered mentally, and can
it be assumed that the evidence against him was legally obtained?
If the Politburo decides to
prosecute Zhou, is it conceivable that the prosecutors and judges involved will
be allowed to independently fulfil their responsibilities? Will they exclude
illegally obtained evidence, fairly analyse the charges and proof, "give
full play to the important role of lawyers in safeguarding the legitimate
rights and interests" of the accused, and render an impartial ruling and
sentence?
If the party decides to make
public selected portions of Zhou's trial, as it did the trial of his alleged
co-conspirator against the dominant leaders, Bo Xilai , former party chief of
Chongqing , it may add to the understandable satisfaction felt by Zhou's many
victims and enemies, but it cannot add more than a façade to the legitimacy of
his punishment.
Of course, it must be said
that these are extraordinary political cases and cannot be taken as
representative of the normal administration of justice. But if violations of
China's constitution and the laws take place in such prominent cases, we can
imagine the extent of violations in less visible ones.
Actually, what defence
lawyers and their clients have revealed about China's too non-transparent legal
system suggests that, despite impressive progress in many other areas of law,
when it comes to criminal justice - the most basic test of a country's
civilisation - large numbers of cases are indeed marked by such violations.
What should we make of this
blatant discrepancy between theory and practice? At the height of the notorious
Soviet "purge trials" of the 1930s, when Stalin manipulated
prosecutors and courts to humiliate and convict rival political leaders on
spurious criminal charges, he solemnly pronounced: "We need the stability
of laws now more than ever."
Although he sent huge
numbers to their deaths without benefit of legal formalities, Stalin
nevertheless thought it preferable to exploit the judicial system to mobilise
popular support at home and abroad, and he saw no contradiction between his
version of the rule of law as an instrument of political persecution and his
perception of the needs of the socialist motherland.
Jerome A. Cohen is professor and co-director of
the US-Asia Law Institute at New York University School of Law and adjunct
senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations.
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