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China: Rule of law, Sometimes
Ram Gorni
July 02, 2003
In Chinese law, politics and business are linked
together. Overseas, people still think of China as a
monolithic state, ruled by the law and a
larger-than-life autocrat whose diktats reverberate in
the nation's farthest reaches. However, at present,
after more than two decades of economic reform, and
under the leadership of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao,
China's centralized system has given way to clusters
of fiefdoms operating outside Beijing's shrinking
sphere of influence.
Reality shows that the Chinese communist bureaucracy
of today is arranged so as not to give a large amount
of power to one man. Furthermore, with or without
Chinese characteristics, the Communist Party suggests
no real ideological solution to the people. China has
transformed from a straitjacketed but ordered society
into another chaotic and corrupt developing country.
The ancient Chinese proverb, "The mountains are high
and the emperor is far away," is ever more true
nowadays. Hu Jintao's looming leadership looks
irrelevant to the citizens, who answer to lower powers.
Across northern China, for example, local officials
are ignoring a more forgiving tax code championed by
Beijing and instead are forcing peasants to pay
exorbitant taxes on land that ceased to be fertile
years ago. In other places such as Henan, Fujian and
Gansu provinces, local bosses have taken central
government funds for combating drugs, human smuggling
and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and used
them to build palatial homes.
The violation of central government regulations by
rural cadres has contributed to rising tension between
farmers and the state, Xinhua editorials often admit.
The agency berates rural officials for failing to
observe most rural policies. Yet, despite the
editorials' bluntness, the official news agency fails
to offer a solution beyond urging cadres to spend more
time studying central government regulations and
improving policy implementation.
Kinship groups have always been important in Chinese
history. In 1949, after it came to power, the
communist regime set about trying to destroy clan
affiliations. As Mao Zedong saw it, preoccupation with
ancient roots had little place in the new China. Clan
patriarchs, who had accumulated land, wealth, prestige
and even private armies in pre-1949 society, were
stripped of assets and persecuted for their
"bourgeois" inclinations. During the chaotic 1966-76
Cultural Revolution, radical Red Guards destroyed clan
temples, tortured landlords and burned the precious,
hand-bound family genealogies, or jiapu, that many
Chinese families had compiled for centuries. For three
decades millions of Chinese tried to forget their
roots.
Not anymore. Family ties are taking over now that the
central government has relaxed its grip on rural
economies. Clan power is making a comeback, and
kinship ties are back in vogue. Clan temples are being
renovated, often with the help of wealthy overseas
Chinese compatriots. Clan elders have once again
assumed political influence, especially in southern
provinces such as Guangdong, Jiangxi and Hunan.
In addition to the particular kinship ties, which are
a significant factor in villages' power structure, in
Chinese society in general there is a deeper sense of
trust than in the United States, where most people
trust an unknown policeman more than their neighbor.
Chinese tend to think of close friends as family
members, where everybody will take care of everybody
else. In this milieu, people entrust others with their
lives and those of their relatives. Criminal
organizations, for example, are bound by a deep sense
of trust and reliance on each other and to their
surrounding township/countryside community.
The re-emergence of Chinese organized crime, or triads,
is drawing attention to the rapid growth of crime and
corruption. Moreover, the triad phenomenon is a global
concern, as Chinese gangs are active in Paris, Rome
and New York. Chinese officials and organized crime
syndicates collaborate in a number of different ways.
Many gangs use bribery and other methods to control
officials or offered to protect their illicit business
dealings. Officials have also been known to cultivate
their own gangs by grooming local criminals. Some
gangs have reportedly "hired" local officials for a
particular purpose. Some local officials also employed
gangsters to attack political rivals. In some cases,
officials were heads of local gangs. In many cases
officials used relatives to make contact with crime
gangs. For example, in June 2002, police who raided a
birthday party thrown by a Chinese gangster got a
surprise gift: 45 government officials found among the
guests.
The danger is that criminals create an economy
parallel to the legal economy, creating entanglements
that can influence the orderly proceedings of the
official one. Criminals may develop political muscle
to defend their illegal business interests that might
bind and influence the international order, lending
resources and safe havens to terrorists. The situation
in China is complex because China is not a fully
developed market society. Furthermore, the successful
triads shed their criminal activities and turn
completely legal.
The lack of law obedience among many in China's vast
society is also attributed to the increasing market
competition and the growing domestic economic gap.
After the collapse of the promised cradle-to-grave
life-long protection, many citizens believe that under
the open-market economy, their hard (honest) work is
simply not enough to provide themselves with a decent
income. Thus, breaking the law is a necessity for
their own survival, in their opinion.
In addition, many view rich Chinese businessman as
crooks, which, in many cases, is the truth. In recent
months, for example, Chinese businessmen have come
under the scrutiny of investigators. The media
elaborate on these investigations of rich tycoons.
Early last month, in one latest example, Hong Kong's
graft-busting agency arrested the wife of one of
China's richest men for suspected corruption. Mao
Yuping, wife of Chinese property tycoon Zhou Zhengyi
and chairwoman of Shanghai Merchants Holdings Ltd, was
arrested along with 19 other people. The Shanghai
government said it had launched a probe into Zhou's
flagship firm, Shanghai Nongkai Development (Group)
Co. Zhou, 42, was ranked in 2002 by Forbes magazine as
China's 11th-richest person, with assets estimated at
US$320 million, compared with $66 million a year
earlier. The businessman rose from a noodle-shop owner
to head a business empire spanning real estate to
finance.
Compared with the chaotic Cultural Revolution, it can
be argued that in the 1980s, China began
reimplementing its system of law. By 2002-03, China
improved much in the way of its rule of law. The
People's Daily reported on March 20: "Twenty-plus
years of hard work on legislation has brought China a
relatively complete legal system, which has played a
significant role in safeguarding the healthy
development of China's market economy" ("China, land
of opportunity for foreign-trained lawyer"). The
country's official English-language flagship reported
on March 17: "Senior legal scholars claimed the
country is well on track to complete a comprehensive
legal system, with specific Chinese characteristics,
by 2010 ... 'It is possible for China to reach the
goal in five or six years if the legislators work in
the right direction', said Xu Xianming, president of
China University of Politics and Law ..." (China
Daily, "Legal system on the right track").
However, in China, there is a problem when the law
meets authority. If a case arises between two normal
people, then the law is somewhat powerful. But if one
person is a company official or from the government,
then there is no power in the law. Business people
know that if they have bought political backing, they
can get investigations into their affairs called off
and stories in the state media killed.
Despite reams of laws written by Beijing over the past
two decades, one prominent foreign lawyer in China
believes the rule of law has actually weakened. By
1997, she says, she encountered Chinese judges who
wanted to build a truly fair legal system. But in
2000, the Communist Party quietly instructed courts to
consider the nation's interests first and moved
independent-minded justices out of power.
Worsening the rule of law in China is the fact that
many in China see smuggling, bribes and piracy as
victimless crimes, and thus tolerated. (Bribes and
success mean almost the same thing.) The gap in
perceptions highlights the difficulties the Chinese
government faces as it tries to curb corruption. As
China is becoming a leading global trading partner,
the lack of law among the government and the citizens
is also becoming an important problem worldwide. This
problem must not be ignored.
Ram Gorni operates ChinaWN.com. China World News
provides a panoramic updated view on contemporary
China by editing English-language news pieces taken
from various sources (domestic and international) in
order to view the bigger picture.
Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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