Chinese President Hu Jintao's administration has boosted the Chinese Communist
Party's (CCP) control over the judiciary, a move designed to enhance Beijing's
ability to maintain stability and to crack down on dissent.
More powers have been given to the party's Central Political and Legal Affairs
Commission (CPLAC), which has control over the police, the prosecutor's offices
and the courts. Hu, also party general secretary, has given new orders that zhengfa
(political and legal) departments - which handle law enforcement and judicial
matters - must observe the so-called "three top priorities", meaning the latter
must give "utmost priority to the party's
enterprise, the people's interests, and the constitution and the law".
That the party's goals and concerns override everything else was made clear in
a national meeting of judicial and security officials called late last month by
the CPLAC, which is headed by conservative Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC)
member Zhou Yongkang. A former minister of public security, Zhou told the
nation's senior judges, prosecutors, police officers and other zhengfa cadres
to "perpetually uphold the political orientation of being loyal to the party,
loyal to the country and the people, and loyalty to the law".
Speaking for the nation's 180,000 judges, the newly promoted president of the
Supreme People's Court (SPC) Wang Shengjun indicated at the same conference
that "only by upholding the 'three priorities' from beginning to end can the
work of the people's courts go along the correct political path".
In what amounts to a drastic politicization of the judiciary, court officials
were told to rally behind the leadership of the "party central authorities with
comrade Hu Jintao as general secretary". "We must unify our consciousness,
thoughts and action regarding what kind of flag the courts will hoist and what
kind of road they will take ... in order to ensure the correct political
direction of the people's courts," Wang added.
While senior zhengfa cadres have laid down relatively few specific
targets for their colleagues, it seems clear that the police and judicial
apparatus have been asked to combat challenges to the socialist order in the
run-up to the all-important Summer Olympic Games next month. Top judge Wang
said the goal of the courts is to "increase harmonious elements [in society],
and to curtail disharmonious elements to the maximum degree".
In the official media, the phrase "disharmonious elements" is frequently used
shorthand for criminals, ethnic separatists, dissidents and foreign spies. Wang
exhorted the nation's judges and other judicial cadres that "a major criterion
for assessing and testing the juridical and implementation functions of the
people's courts" would be whether they could "promote society's harmony".
Also speaking at the national meeting, Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu
urged zhengfa units to "comprehensively carry out demands made by the
central party authorities about improving security in relation to the
Olympics". "We must guarantee the safe and smooth running of the Beijing
Olympics," he added.
It is noteworthy that the Hu-led Politburo has over the past year taken a much
more conservative line on the party's leadership over judicial and
law-enforcement organs. In the first year after he became party chief in
November 2002, Hu repeatedly stressed that party and government departments
must fully respect the Chinese Constitution as well as the goal of "running the
country according to law".
Since early 2008, however, Hu's tactic has shifted to using the legal and
judicial apparatus as a tool for bolstering CCP authority and sociopolitical
stability. Official Chinese media recently quoted Hu as saying that the
foremost task of "political and legal" organs - which include police,
prosecutor's offices and courts - should be to "steadfastly safeguard the CCP's
ruling party status, as well as national security and the people's interests".
At the same time, security, legal and judicial officials have been warned
against being misled by "Western" concepts about democracy, political freedom
or the independence of the judiciary. The official Legal Daily reported last
month that different groups of police and court officials had watched a film
entitled "Lessons from the 'color revolutions'." The documentary, put together
by the CPLAC and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), was about
political changes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005, when
"pro-West" opposition forces managed to seize power after defeating
conservative, autocratic ruling parties.
The daily reported that after watching the film, "the political consciousness
[of the audience] was enhanced" and that they were more committed than ever to
"combating various subversive activities of enemy forces both in and outside
China and to resolutely uphold the socialist order".
In interviews with the domestic media, officials in zhengfa departments
have vowed to fulfill their prescribed role as the "tools of democratic
proletarian dictatorship". Zhang Wenxian, the president of the Higher People's
Court in Jilin province, has revived Cultural Revolution-era language to play
up the fact that "the people's courts are state judicial organs under the
leadership of the CCP".
"The courts must uphold the party's leadership so as to keep up their [correct]
political orientation," he added. "They must take as their holy task the
sustenance of the party's ruling foundation and the consolidation of the CCP's
ruling-party status."
Zhang particularly drew attention to sociopolitical stability being jeopardized
due to the "infiltration and disruption activities by Western countries", for
example, by "attacking our socialist judicial system through exaggerating and
distorting certain judicial cases".
In a similar vein, the head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of
Guangdong province Liu Yupu called on law enforcement and judicial officials in
his province to "unify their thoughts and arm their brains" with Hu's
instructions concerning how police and court officers can contribute to
national security. Liu, who doubles as the vice party secretary of Guangdong,
noted that "the state security situation in Guangdong is tough because being
close to Hong Kong and Macau, the province is at the frontline of the struggle
against enemies".
Since the marathon personnel changes that took place in the run-up to and
immediately after the 17th CCP Congress last October, cadres at both the CPLAC
and its regional offshoots have been visibly given more clout. The same is true
for senior officials in the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). SPC president
Wang, who got his promotion at the National People's Congress (NPC) last March,
is a former CPLAC secretary general.
Since administrative streamlining that took place last year, the number of
vice-party secretaries of most provinces has been reduced to two. As in the
case of super-rich Guangdong, one of the two vice party bosses of several
provinces is the cadre in charge of police, legal and judicial work. Meanwhile,
a number of high-level MPS cadres have been transferred to senior slots in the
provinces. For example, Assistant Minister of Public Security Sun Yongbo was
late last month promoted vice-governor of Heilongjiang province. The Hong Kong
daily Wen Wei Po quoted informed sources in Beijing as saying that the recent
spate of promotions received by senior police officers "reflects the importance
that central and regional authorities are attaching to security work".
Analysts familiar with the tortuous course of Chinese legal and judicial
evolution, however, are alarmed by the fact that CCP authorities seem to be
putting political loyalty before professional competence in picking top
officials in the zhengfa apparatus. The best example is SPC honcho Wang,
who is the equivalent of China's chief justice. Before being promoted to the
CPLAC in 1993, Wang was police chief in Anhui province for several years.
Yet Wang never went to law school, nor does he have any experience as a lawyer,
judge or prosecutor. His predecessor Xiao Yang, by comparison, is a legal
scholar and a veteran government prosecutor at both the provincial and central
level. Moreover, most of the dozen-odd SPC vice-presidents are respected law
professionals, including several who used to be professors in well-known law
schools. Wang's appointment as chief judge seems to reflect the Hu leadership's
anxiety about putting the courts under the control of a trusted party
functionary.
The apparent politicization of the courts is taking place even as the SPC is
trying to improve the quality and reputation of the country's notoriously
corrupt judges. Last month, SPC vice president Shen Deyong announced a
countrywide "tracking system" whereby the nation's highest court would
systematically track disputed court cases - and penalize regional judges who
have a record of misjudgments.
"We will streamline principles for judges' discretionary powers and try to
unify standards so as to avoid the public's doubts of judicial justice because
of very different judgments on similar cases," Shen said. Nonetheless, even
party and government departments seem to have doubts about the reliability and
professionalism of judges. For example, it has become a norm for senior cadres
accused of corrupt practices to be put on trial in a province that is outside
the suspect's jurisdiction. The fact that judges have been called on by the top
CCP leadership to put political loyalty before other considerations, however,
could militate against efforts to buttress their ethical and professional
standards.
The increasingly powerful public-security establishment has also been accused
of being a hotbed of factionalism: an exceptionally large number of senior
police officers were either born in Heilongjiang province or have spent a good
part of their career there. Members of this Heilongjiang Faction within the MPS
have included Vice Ministers Yang Huanning, Zhang Xinfeng and Meng Hongwei and
the just-retired former vice minister Bai Jingfu.
The lack of "geographical diversity" within the leadership of such a major
ministry goes against the well known Deng Xiaoping dictum on CCP personnel
arrangements that senior officials in party and government units should hail
from "the five lakes and four seas". In Hu's eagerness to secure the unstinting
support of security and judicial officials for augmenting CCP authority and
clamping down on dissent however, Hu seems willing to give loyalists in the zhengfa
system additional perks - and ignore their indiscretion to bolster party unity.
Dr Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He
has worked in senior editorial positions in international media including
Asiaweek newsmagazine, the South China Morning Post and the Asia-Pacific
Headquarters of CNN. He is the author of five books on China, including the
recently published Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders,
New Challenges.
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