Dim
prospects for political-legal reform in
China By Willy Lam
The
blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng's plight, which
piqued much of the world's attention the past
fortnight, has fully exposed the shocking failings
of China's law-enforcement apparatus.
Chen
was forced to seek shelter in the US Embassy in
Beijing due to the Chinese authorities' systematic
violations of his civil liberties. After having
served a four-year jail term under the dubious
charges of "obstructing traffic and destroying
property", Chen was kept under illegal house
arrest in his native Dongshigu village, Shandong
province, from 2010 until his daring escape last
month.
Neither human-rights activists nor
reporters were allowed to visit him in Dongshigu.
As a result of protracted negotiation between
Chinese and US authorities, it seems Chen, who is now
recuperating in a
Beijing hospital that is heavily guarded by
police, will be allowed to go to New York
University as a visiting scholar later this year.
Yet serious questions remain about the
Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) labyrinthine
zhengfa ("political and legal")
bureaucracy, which controls the police and
judicial organs. Given the bad publicity that the
Chen case has generated, will the new leadership
that will be endorsed at the 18th CCP Congress
this autumn overhaul this police-state
establishment? Or is it more likely that, given
the party elite's obsession with wei-wen
(short for weihu wending, or preserving
stability), one of the party-state's largest
operations will continue to grow in clout and
influence?
It is instructive to first take
a look at how the law-enforcement apparatus, which
is under the leadership of Politburo Standing
Committee (PBSC) member Zhou Yongkang, has amassed
so much power in the past few years.
The
Central Political and Legal Commission (CPLC), or
zhengfawei, which Zhou chairs, is in charge
of the Ministry of Public Security (or police),
the Ministry of State Security (or secret police),
the Procuratorate (or prosecutors' offices) and
the courts. In tandem with the Central Military
Commission (CMC), the CPLC also exercises control
over the people's militia as well as the People's
Armed Police, which is a paramilitary unit charged
with tackling riots and disturbances.
Additionally, there appears to be
unofficial security forces hired by local
governments and the center. The zhengfa
system hires "informants", citizens who are asked
to provide information to the police when they
spot suspicious characters or hear about
"anti-government plots" in the neighborhood.
No one knows how many informants there
are, but one report suggested a high
concentration. In Kailu, an Inner Mongolian
county, public security recruited 12,093
informants out of 400,000 inhabitants.
The
exact number of official, unofficial and informant
personnel under the zhengfa apparatus is a
state secret. Yet, it is well-known that the
budget, staff and power of the law enforcement
establishment has grown substantially since 2008,
which witnessed not only the Beijing Summer
Olympic Games but also the worst outbreak of
rioting in Tibetan areas since the end of the
Cultural Revolution in 1976.
It was also
in the same year that CCP authorities employed Mao
Zedong's "people's warfare" concept to boost
internal security.
Wei-wen
expenditures available to departments under the
CPLC grew from 514.0 billion yuan (US$81.3
billion) in 2010 to 624.4 billion yuan in 2011-
and to 701.7 billion yuan this year. In both 2011
and 2012, the wei-wen budget exceeded even
that of the publicized outlays of the People's
Liberation Army.
While Zhou has played a
sizeable role in extending his zhengfa
empire, he enjoys the support of other PBSC
members, particularly President Hu Jintao. In
numerous speeches the past few years, Hu has
called upon central and regional cadres to
"consider preserving stability as [their] foremost
task".
Much of the expansion of the
zhengfa empire has taken place in the
localities. According to Chen Guangcheng,
wei-wen expenditures for Dongshigu village
and its vicinity were 60 million yuan (about
US$9.5 million) last year, double the 2008 budget
of 30 million yuan.
A team of at least 200
police and informants were responsible for the
"safety" of Chen. The apparent overzealousness of
many grassroots wei-wen units might give
rise to the impression that central authorities
are not necessarily at fault: the local units
might have given excessively draconian
interpretations to instructions from on high.
As Northwestern University political
scientist Victor Shih pointed out, Beijing appears
to give local zhengfa units some autonomy
so that "if they make a mistake, all the blame can
be put on local officials without jeopardizing the
entire model" [1]. Yet given the national if not
international fame of activists such as Chen, it
is hard to believe that the CPLC has not
explicitly authorized the extra-legal treatment
that has been meted out to these thorns in the
side of the authorities.
In fact, it is
the zhengfawei - and its sister unit, the
Commission for Social Management and Comprehensive
Treatment of Law and Order - which has established
a plethora of local-level units for the purpose of
ensuring better implementation of central edicts.
From the mid-2000s, offices for Upholding
Stability and the Comprehensive Treatment of Law
and Order began to be set up in every city
district and every village town or township.
That the zhengfawei has enhanced
its control over grassroots offices - and at the
same time expanded its overall national clout - is
evidenced by the increasing number of regional
law-enforcement chiefs who have been appointed
deputy party secretaries of provinces and
zhixiashi (provincial-level
municipalities).
In at least five of
China's 31 provinces, autonomous regions and
zhixiashi, heads of zhengfa
departments double as deputy party secretaries.
These include the Tibet and Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Regions - which have high
concentrations of ethnic minorities - in addition
to Qinghai and Zhejiang provinces and the Beijing
municipality.
In the interest of
administrative streamlining, the number of deputy
party secretaries of provinces and
zhixiashi has been reduced to two. Without
an exception, the governor or mayor occupies one
of the two slots of deputy party secretary. That
the second deputy party secretary is in charge of
law-enforcement testifies to the importance that
Beijing has attached to upholding stability. At
least theoretically, this also makes it easier for
the provincial or municipal zhengfa chief
to exercise tighter supervision over
wei-wen units within his or her
jurisdiction.
While it is true that quite
a number of grassroots zhengfa cadres may
have exaggerated the dangers of "destabilizing
elements" in their localities to get more funding
from either the provincial capital or Beijing,
many more local cadres are worried about losing
their jobs should they be seen as failing to
uphold law and order.
In most provinces
and cities, a grassroots official is liable to be
summarily fired if a major destabilizing incident
- for example, a riot involving thousands of
protestors or the sudden disappearance of an
influential human-rights activist such as Chen -
was to take place.
By the same token, a
cadre with the reputation of a tough law-and-order
enforcer is seen as having a sure-fire ticket for
promotion. Before his downfall in March, former
Chongqing CCP secretary Bo Xilai became a national
hero due to the apparent success of the
dahei ("crackdown on underground gangs")
campaign in his metropolis.
Bo's
anti-triad operation, which was run as a
Maoist-style political movement, fully illustrated
the problems of China's law-enforcement model.
Quite a number of the triad bosses were
incarcerated on trumped up charges - and without
due judicial process.
Bo and his power
wife, the lawyer-businesswomen Gu Kailai, had a
reputation of subjecting their foes to extra-legal
punishments such as torture or even murder. In
early February, Bo's former police chief Wang
Lijun, the erstwhile "national dahei hero",
tried to seek political asylum at the US consulate
in nearby Chengdu due to fears that Bo had turned
his ire on him.
Not surprisingly,
Beijing's approach to upholding stability has
attracted intense criticism from relatively
liberal academics and public intellectuals.
According to a recent report compiled by the
social stability research group at Tsinghua
University, the authorities are trapped in a
vicious cycle of "society becoming even less
stable even as more resources are being devoted to
wei-wen".
The report added,
"Various levels of government have earmarked
massive human and material resources for upholding
stability, yet the quantity of incidents relating
to social contradiction and confrontation has
ceaselessly increased."
According to
Wenzhou University social scientist Wang Yong,
"Wei-wen has exacted huge social costs to
which we must pay attention." For example, since
the law-enforcement apparatus has often used
political movement-style maneuvers to stamp out
the seeds of instability, "normal administrative
regulations and the rule of law has been damaged",
according to Professor Wang. Wang also wrote, "The
[normal] voices of society have disappeared even
as the private [social] sphere has shrunken even
further."
Zhou Yongkang, the CPLC chairman
since 2007, has taken flak for the Shandong
police's failure to keep a blind man under house
arrest. He also was exposed to ridicule and
criticism for the overall lawlessness in
Chongqing. There was even innuendo that the PBSC
member had conspired with Bo to enable the latter
to not only join the PBSC later this year but to
eventually become CCP general secretary.
Given that Zhou, age 69, is set to retire
at the 18th Party Congress, will there be a
restructuring of the zhengfa bureaucracy -
as well as the wei-wen mindset - by the
next leadership, or at least Zhou's successor?
Northwestern University's Shih thinks
significant changes in either the clout or the
approach of the law enforcement apparatus are
unlikely. "The growth of the security apparatus
has to do with the rising need of the regime to
prevent 'sudden incidents'," Shih said, "Any major
weakening of this capacity can bring unexpected
consequences" [2].
Bo Zhiyue, a veteran
analyst of Chinese elite politics at the National
University of Singapore, said future developments
hinged on which PBSC member would assume the
zhengfa portfolio after the 18th CCP
Congress. "Much depends on who will become the new
head the CPLC - and how much this leader is
willing to shake up the establishment," he said.
Bo speculated, "The expansion of the
zhengfa apparatus has been partly due to
the division of labor among PBSC members and
partly due to the need to maintain stability. If
Zhou has a lot of say in choosing his own
successor and his successor is loyal to his
policies, then there is no hope of fundamental
changes. If Zhou's successor is chosen to shake up
the apparatus, there would be substantial
changes," [3]
As things stand, there seems
to be a strong consensus among the PBSC members -
including Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, who are
expected to form the axis of the upcoming
fifth-generation leadership - that the leadership
must pull out all the stops to boost security and
stability.
The urge to preserve the Maoist
"one voice chamber" has grown in light of fissures
at the CCP's top echelons exposed by the Bo Xilai
scandal.
As was the case in 1989, the
party leadership appears anxious to prevent
dissidents from exploiting factional strife within
the CCP to "make propaganda" for Western-style
political reforms.
This perhaps explains
why, despite Beijing's pledge to continue
"human-rights dialogues" with the United States
and other Western countries, the wei-wen
apparatus has been cracking down even harder on
so-called destabilizing agents.
Several
public intellectuals and human-rights lawyers who
have helped Chen in the past few years have been
subjected to brutal treatment. Globally famous
activist Hu Jia and his wife have been put under
house arrest. Attorney Jiang Tianyong, who tried
to visit Chen in the hospital, was badly beaten up
by police and prevented from leaving his apartment
to seek medical care.
Even as the
international media speculate on whether Beijing
will honor promises made to both US officials and
Chen about fulfilling his wishes to pursue further
studies abroad, China's zhengfa machinery
continues in overdrive.
Notes 1. Author's
interview with Victor Shih, May 2012. 2. Ibid.
3. Author's interview with Bo Zhiyue, May
2012.
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, 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. Lam is an
Adjunct Professor of China studies at Akita
International University, Japan, and at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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