Among their most critical findings is that the relationship between prosecutors and judges tends to be so close that there is “little space for lawyers to work within.” More basically, a judge is quoted as saying, “the police, the judge and the prosecutor are in one family ….”

The interviews found that some participants in the system would prefer a higher level of legality. Ultimately, however, criminal justice is “a process within a system, a Party-centered system which demands certainty of outcome (conviction).”

The authors write that despite “traces of due process,” the value system allows exceptions that violate the law. Violations of the law have become “systematic and entrenched… they have also become internalized… the rules to be followed are quite different from the rules in the formal rules” of the Criminal Procedure Law and merely changing legal rules would not improve rights and increase the reliability of the system. It would be necessary for the Party-state to “discard existing prejudices and adopt new and liberal values… ‘system reform’ not ‘law reform.’”

See also two previous posts by Lubman, via CDT: Laws on Paper vs. Law in Practice and A Glimpse into Chinese Law-Making.

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Against a backdrop of rapid socio-economic change and modernization, China continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.

The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability” ; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country. The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China’s “social stability maintenance” expenses are now larger than its defense budget.

At the same time Chinese citizens are increasingly rights-conscious and challenging the authorities over livelihood issues, land seizures, forced evictions, abuses of power by corrupt cadres, discrimination, and economic inequalities. Official and scholarly statistics estimate that 250-500 protests occur per day; participants number from ten to tens of thousands. Internet users and reform-oriented media are aggressively pushing the boundaries of censorship, despite the risks of doing so, by advocating for the rule of law and transparency, exposing official wrong-doing, and calling for reforms.

China’s state media has responded to the report with a flurry of indignation, as HRW’s Nicholas Bequelin noted:

此地无银三百两： People’s Daily and China Daily have published a total of 10 (!) articles on Human Rights Watch (@hrw) in one week.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 31, 2012

(“此地无银三百两”: “No 300 taels of silver here”; to draw attention to something by denying it.)

People’s Daily, for example, suggested that criticism of China’s rights record arose from Western insecurity:

It seems that some Western countries and NGOs have set out to attack China over its human rights issues. They first assume that human rights are being ignored, then seek evidence from rumors, and make speculations to blindly accuse China of violating human rights with the real purpose of distorting China’s international image ….

Why does the West still hold a prejudice against China’s human rights? The only reason is that the Cold War mentality and ideological hegemony still prevails. As long as China is a socialist country, the West will insist on distorting its image and see China as a threat to the Western system.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has been too boastful of its political system, believing it is the only system that has universal value in the world.

China’s significant economic progress has stirred Western anxieties. Distorting China’s human rights becomes the only political choice.

Elsewhere, People’s Daily also criticised the report for failing to acknowledge China’s progress in legal reform. From Xinhua:

The World Report “gave no word on the great progress in terms of China’s judicial reforms that have been demonstrated in the Criminal Procedural Law draft amendment,” the article said.

Legal experts say the draft amendment will help improve the protection of criminal suspects’ human rights, by preventing judges from accepting confessions from tortured suspects and giving these suspects more defense options.

In fact, the report does acknowledge the amendment, but reiterates concern at the prospect of legalised enforced disappearances:

In August 2011, in an effort to … improve the administration of justice, the government published new rules to eliminate unlawfully obtained evidence and strengthened the procedural rights of the defense in its draft revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law. It is likely it will be adopted in March 2012.

However, the draft revisions also introduced an alarming provision that would effectively legalize enforced disappearances by allowing police to secretly detain suspects for up to six months at a location of their choice in “state security, terrorism and major corruption cases.” The measure would put suspects at great risk of torture while giving the government justification for the “disappearance” of dissidents and activists in the future. Adoption of this measure—which is hotly criticized in Chinese media by human rights lawyers, activists, and part of the legal community—would significantly deviate from China’s previous stance of gradual convergence with international norms on administering justice, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed in 1997 but has yet to ratify.

See more on CDT.

People’s Daily also objected to the report’s claim that “the government continues to build a ‘new socialist countryside’ [in Tibet] by relocating and rehousing up to 80 percent of the TAR population, including all pastoralists and nomads.” From Xinhua:

The People’s Daily article, jointly published by two Tibet experts, said the HRW’s conclusion was groundless and contradictory to basic facts.

The two authors, Zhang Ming, or Lorong Dramadul, with the China Tibetology Research Center, and Professor Yang Minghong with Sichuan University, hoped that their experiences and observations from over 20 years of field research in Tibet could help clarify the misunderstandings.

They cited official statistics and said that in 2011, 1.85 million Tibetans, or 61 percent of the total population, had settled in permanent residences.

“No more than 150,000 people, or less than 5 percent of the Tibetan population, had left their original residence,” the experts wrote.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Pan Xizhe’s op-ed at China Daily accused Human Rights Watch of sloppy methodology and political motivations:

At first glance, Human Rights Watch appears to be keen on the protection of international human rights. But it actually carries out its work with double standards and bias. Its observations lack political neutrality and its research methods are questionable. The organization’s employment of unqualified workers has also hurt the credibility of its report. Human Rights Watch should reflect inward before passing on judgment to others.

The media and international observers have long criticized Human Rights Watch for passing judgment of human rights conditions of a country or region through tinted lens. It turns a blind eye to human rights issues in some countries while criticizing others vehemently. The Sunday Times quoted a human rights insider in the United States as saying that the organization caters its reports to the US government, which greatly affects its objectivity ….

In the China portion of its report, Human Rights Watch used expressions such as “estimate”, “possibly”, and “probably”. It criticized China’s judiciary system, religious institutions, regional autonomy by ethnic groups, family planning policy as well as foreign and economic policies.

The US section of the report, which criticises the Obama White House’s failure to pursue Bush administration officials for approving the use of torture and decries America’s “abusive” counterterrorism policies, growing poverty and world-leading prison population, can be read here.

While the World Report looked back at 2011, at The Diplomat, HRW’s Phelim Kine looks ahead to 2012:

These cases represent more than the Chinese government’s well-documented contempt for freedom of expression explicitly guaranteed in Article 35 of the Constitution. They are also clear efforts to breed fear and sow silence among China’s beleaguered community of human rights defenders and civil society activists. The aim: to ensure that the 12-month senior Communist Party leadership transition this year proceeds without public challenges to the Party’s 61-year monopoly on power. China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are preparing to step aside for a new generation of leaders, widely touted to be Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, in a secretive political succession that won’t be complete until in March 2013 ….

The government’s overriding obsession with maintaining its monopoly on power make it likely that these abuses will continue under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Foreign governments could help reverse this trend and give support to Chinese who want a more accountable government by more vigorously engaging the government on such violations. Thirty years since the launch of China’s economic reform and opening, a decade after China entered the World Trade Organization, and five years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the deterioration in respect for human rights and rule of law in China should be of serious concern for all countries seeking long-term, sustainable and mutually-beneficial bilateral relations with China.

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Does the Wukan case indeed mean that central- and local-level officials will henceforward lean toward relatively conciliatory and non-violent means to tackle protests by peasants and other disaffected elements in society? At least on the surface, Wang Yang’s handling of Wukan has won the support of the state media. The People’s Daily hailed Guangzhou’s efforts as an example of “accommodating and defusing contradictions and conflicts in a good way.” It praised Guangdong leaders for “grasping well the aspirations of the masses.” The commentary noted whether officials could satisfactorily resolve questions regarding the masses’ malcontents was a “yardstick of cadres’ ties with the people as well as their leadership ability.” The Global Times praised Guangdong leaders for “putting the interests of the public in the first place when handling land disputes” (People’s Daily, December 22, 2011; Global Times [Beijing], December 22, 2011; Bloomberg, December 22, 2011). The Wukan model also won plaudits from members of the remnant liberal wing of the party, a reference to the followers of radical, pro-West modernizers represented by the late party secretaries Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. “I hope that the Wukan incident can push society to establish a system which is based on democracy and the rule of law,” said Hu Deping, the respected son of Hu Yaobang, “I hope that when we are faced with similar problems in the future, we can resort to the rule of law and negotiation” (South China Morning Post, December 30, 2011; Sina.com, December 30, 2011).

The Wukan protests, as noted last week by Chinese author Yu Hua, demonstrated a bilateral lack of faith in China’s legal system and a preference for administrative actions and political arrangements to maintain stability in the face of complaints. Protests are also the most effective tool for China’s ordinary citizens to get things done, The Diplomat’s David Cohen observed last week. Still, recent high-profile comments from suggest that the events in Wukan struck a chord inside the party. China legal expert Stanley Lubman writes in The Wall Street Journal about a “provocative” commentary about Wukan from within the CCP, posted to an online forum by CCP history magazine editor Wu Si:

Wu offers no sure path to attain the goal he advocates, but his conclusion is most dramatic: “To solve problems with civil rights and the rule of law in mind, there must be a paradigm shift for cadres,” who need to change the way the way they “mediate crises.” In solving social conflicts, he writes, new ways of thought “will open a new road” for Chinese society.

Invocation of the rule of law has been a ritual for some years in China, but it is usually only activists and law reformers who are willing to suggest it is an entirely distinctive approach to ordering society. The call for a “paradigm” change in a party magazine suggests something more radical than the usual slogans and formulas.

Some Western observers, including this writer, have tried to incorporate into their analyses of Chinese law the idea of “legal culture” — the way people in a society, from top to bottom, think about where law comes from, its aims and its methods. That is what Wu Si touches on when he suggests that cadres rethink about how they address social conflict. He is proposing that in practice they consciously place a much greater reliance on law and on legal institutions, which could become “a force for reform” leading to “systemic changes.”

See also CDT coverage of the original text and English translation of Wu Si’s comments, as well as the commentary from Hu Deping.

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The draft revision contains some significant encouraging changes. People suspected of ordinary crimes will be entitled to new rights, including prompt access to a lawyer and protection against coerced self-incrimination. There is also the right to have witnesses testify in court and be subject to cross-examination, to have police interrogations electronically recorded in some serious cases and to exclude from evidence confessions obtained by torture. Implementing these new rights will be challenging, but they signal a commitment to reaching China’s oft-stated goals of ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it signed in 1998, and establishing the rule of law.

Despite its positive aspects, the draft revision also embraces a more sinister agenda toward political outsiders. It will authorize, under Article 73, the practice of enforced disappearances of political offenders. While the practice has been employed for years, it was always technically illegal—until now. Under the draft, citizens can be secretly detained for up to six months on suspicion of “endangering national security” or “terrorism”—notoriously vague charges that have long been manipulated by police, prosecutors and courts. Article 73 is a blatant, open-ended attempt to authorize expanded political repression in the guise of concern for national security.

See more on the proposed Criminal Procedure Law changes, including reactions from Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, via CDT.

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Some include:

“If you want to jump, find a higher place to jump from. Doing it this way you don’t die, you just slow down the traffic.”

“Probably they were all rushing to work, and besides, what good is getting out of the car going to do? Unless you’re a doctor or know how to do first aid.”

“If you want to die, you can’t get other people involved in it.”

To the relief of many, other posts displayed some semblance of a conscience:

“Why is everybody rushing by and nobody gets out of their car to make sure she’s OK?”

“What are you doing just reporting it to the police and not getting out to help?”

“You guys, take a look at this video bearing in mind the Guangdong incident with little Yueyue. I think that the sad thing is not the person who jumped but society itself—so many people who didn’t even stop for a moment to get out of their cars to help.”

While the cameraman called an emergency number before driving off, the incident serves as another recent example of Chinese indifference when witnessing a fellow citizen in need. After the nation erupted last month over the horrific hit-and-run death of 2-year-old Yue Yue in Foshan, AFP reported yesterday that officials in Shenzhen have begun to draft rules to protect well-intentioned rescuers from legal action. A Global Times Op-Ed on Monday discussed the need to create a Good Samaritan law and what form that law would take, and today Holly McFarland speculates in Christian Science Monitor about which precedent would work best in China:

A recent China Daily poll reveals that approximately 87 percent of Chinese citizens are unlikely to aid an elderly person who has fallen in the street because they want to avoid being blamed for the accident. “The public’s lack of a sense of trust has been made obvious by recent media stories that have looked at the hesitation people feel before they come to someone else’s aid,” Xie Jing, a communications professor at Fudan University, told the newspaper.

…

In spite of the outrage bubbling in China over society’s apparent moral decline, the majority of the population is reluctant to follow in France’s footsteps. According to one online poll, 77.7 percent of Chinese respondents disagree with the idea of establishing a “duty to rescue” law. Most claim they don’t want moral acts to be legally enforced. With restrictions on individual freedom already so tightly monitored, the Chinese appear weary to have one more government mandate imposed.

China also announced today that a non-governmental organization will award 3,000 yuan to the Uruguayan woman, widely and incorrectly reported to be an American tourist, who rescued a person from an apparent suicide attempt in Hangzhou’s West Lake last month.

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Now the debate about a law to protect prospective Samaritans has been revived. When seeking for a legal precedent, the systems in two countries, the US and France, come to mind. In the US, the Good Samaritan law varies widely from state to state. However, its general basis is that anybody aiding a person in danger, without having caused the danger, is thereby immune to any prosecution arising from that rescue.

…

France takes a markedly different approach. The French law rests on the concept of punishing someone who does not come to the aid of a person in danger, in essence a Bad Samaritan law. It’s a rare case where the law recognizes an obligation to assist, forcing anyone in the position to save someone without putting themselves in peril to do so. Anyone found to be in breach in this law is liable to criminal prosecution and faces five years in jail as well as a fine of 75,000 euros (660,000 yuan).

On paper, the French law sounds much harsher and would doubtlessly be rejected in the fiercely individualistic US. However, where the US Good Samaritan law has caused much debate and is outright rejected in many jurisdictions, the French version has become a popular and key part of the country’s legal code. When it was first drafted, there were public concerns, but over the years, the obligation to help has become second nature to the French public.

Now, which of these would be most applicable to China? Views on Weibo seem divided, with many favoring legal protection for people like Peng Yu while others clamor for punishment to be meted out to the drivers that killed Yueyue and the passers-by who left her for dead. It seems that a mixture of the two would be best. Crucially, there is little point in passing an either kind of law if the government cannot enforce it.

While outside observers have sought to explain Yue Yue’s death through an critique of capitalist and communist ideologies in China, international charity lawyer Blake Bromley cites the biblical story of the Good Samaritan to shed light on the tragedy’s true lesson. From Huffington Post:

It was not because she was poor that the rubbish collector, Chen Xianmei picked up Yueyue and carried her off the road. Similarly, the compassion demonstrated by the Good Samaritan had little to do with his class or economic status. It is not because he belonged to a class reviled by the majority of people that the Samaritan stopped to help. He helped because he saw the injured man as his neighbor. China does not need an ideological debate that focuses on issues of “class” and “capitalism.” China has already fought a revolution on those divisive issues. China needs a debate that can unite and uplift its society. Properly understood, “Who is my neighbor?” is a moral and ethical question as relevant to the inhabitants of Zhongnanhai as it is to the shoppers who passed Yueyue in the market street. It is an inquiry that transcends social standing, economic class and party affiliation. Jesus dealt with the question in relationship to the love of God. Can China explore this question in a non-religious context that reflects the reality of contemporary China? If it can, the death of Yueyue might have a profoundly beneficial influence on the whole country and help China come to an understanding of charity that is simultaneously global and Chinese.

See also an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend in light of the Yue Yue story, in which Dick Gross examines an event in the United States 30 years ago that prompted similar national introspection and studies that have emerged since about our inclinations toward altruism.

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Is Chen destined to be illegally silenced for the rest of his life? He will soon turn 40 and has the iron will and charisma of a Gandhi. He is badly debilitated, however, after being denied adequate medical attention for six years for increasingly serious gastroenteritis. His death in prison would plainly embarrass his captors, but dying “at home” might appear less sinister.

Neither current criminal legislation nor proposed revisions offer hope of a legal remedy. In practice the procuracy, the supposed “watchdog of legality” imported from the Soviet Union, is politically powerless to fulfil its legal obligations to hold the police to legal standards. Condemnations by United Nations experts and foreign governments, media, rights organisations and scholars have failed to move Zhou Yongkang , who was minister of public security when Chen was first detained and now heads the central Communist Party Political-Legal Committee that controls all Chinese legal institutions. Popular protests against shameless injustice seem to offer Chen’s only chance.

Cohen counsels caution regarding the resumption of Chen’s daughter’s schooling. He notes that a similar return to school for the daughter of missing lawyer Gao Zhisheng “only added to the pressures that battered her and did not presage release for her courageous father.”

Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported apparent progress on Tuesday [zh], in the form of supposed guarantees of Chen’s right to medical treatment and even visitors. These were extracted by journalist Li Jianjun from the Yinan County Public Security Bureau, which conceded:

“Chen Guangcheng is not a foreign aggressor, he is a citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. He can visit the hospital and receive visitors.”

Li’s visit to Dongshigu on Wednesday nevertheless followed the usual pattern, according to a briefing from CHRD:

Despite authorities’ spoken guarantees, Hunan journalist and activist Li Jianjun (李建军) was one of three individuals taken into custody and interrogated by police on October 26, when the group was on the way to see the lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚) in Shandong Province. The incident occurred just after officials fed dubious claims and unlikely promises to Li about going to visit Chen in Dongshigu Village. Over the previous two days, authorities had told Li that, contrary to online reports, Chen is allowed medical care and can have visitors if he so chooses, and that recent reports of beatings of activists going to Dongshigu are merely rumors. A former journalist with the Chengdu Business Times, Li was also repeatedly promised that he would not be interfered with if he went to the village.

Li was seized and taken to the Shuanghou Township Police Station in Linnan County along with Wang Xuezhen (王雪臻) and Guo Feng (郭峰). At the station, the activists asked police about the guarantees of a safe journey provided by authorities, and officers said they could file a report but implied it would not do any good. Wang, who had been robbed when she had come to the area in September, was struck in the mouth by a station personnel, and the three individuals’ cell phones were taken away. The three were released later and decided to abandon their trip to Dongshigu.

China Media Project’s David Bandurski examined Chinese responses to Chen’s situation by both citizens and media, pointing to previously mentioned articles in Global Times and the Oriental Morning Post:

Perhaps taking the cake is a pair of videos originally posted to the domestic video sharing site Youku (but now on YouTube [and embedded at CMP]) in which supporters of Chen Guangcheng unable to gain access to his village put up a fireworks display on the village’s outskirts. “Lighting up the sky for you, Guangcheng,” says the voice on the video.

Getting back to the issue of newspaper coverage, however, it is important to note that the October 12 Global Times editorial on Chen Guangcheng’s case (“The Chen Guangcheng Incident Should not be Turned Ideological”) was not just, as Farris said, “the first time the Global Times has ever mentioned Chen in a Chinese language piece” — it was the first time any Chinese newspaper mentioned Chen Guangcheng in any way, shape or form since 2004.

There were a handful of independent blog reports on Chen Guangcheng’s case, most notably by CMP fellows Wang Keqin (王克勤) and Zhai Minglei (翟明磊), but there was never any mention in mainstream news media.

CMP also posted a cartoon by artist Kuang Biao showing the “Rabid Dogs of Linyi” guarding “the East Village of Corpses and Bones” (a play on ‘Dongshigu’: 东尸骨村, rather than 东师古村). See also Zeng Jinyan’s post at the Index on Censorship’s Uncut blog, and CDT’s round-up of recent coverage and list of related search terms (including 东尸骨村) which have been blocked on Sina Weibo.

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A report from the All China Women’s Federation released last year found that 64 percent of Chinese adults have experienced violence at home at some point. Another study from from the China Law Institute estimates that more than one-third of Chinese families have experienced domestic abuse and the vast majority of victims are women.

Yet this is also a society where few people are willing to talk openly about domestic abuse. It’s unusual to discuss one’s private problems outside the home, and domestic violence is still largely considered a family affair.

Advocates hope the pending passage of the country’s first domestic-abuse law could change that, and make families more aware of the problem.

China Daily has more on the law, which has been in the works for years, but may finally be passed:

Many countries have set up laws to prevent all forms of violence against women, including domestic abuse. In China, many regulations have been issued to punish perpetrators, but they are scattered through different laws, said Liu at the Women’s Studies Institute.

“To better protect women’s rights, we need a dedicated law,” she added.

Chen Wei, a Beijing-based attorney specializing in marriage cases, said the most difficult thing for victims is proving their physical and mental injuries.

Even if violent partners are punished, they are often only given short-term detention or ordered to pay compensation, which does little to solve the problem, she said.

Liu agreed and urged legislators to include heavier punishments in the new law. It should also clarify the responsibilities for all relevant departments, she added, such as what police stations and courts should do to bring an end to violence in the home.

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The change would essentially enshrine what has become a common practice for silencing dissidents, many of whom have disappeared for months without formal charges being filed. Under the change, the suspects could be held without their family members or lawyers being notified.

The proposed change in the law was disclosed last week in the respected Legal Daily.

“This new amendment will legalize ‘forced disappearance,’” Beijing attorney Liu Xiaoyuan wrote on Twitter on Saturday. Liu was briefly detained around the same time as his friend and client Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose arrest this spring made international headlines.

Under current law, a person suspected of a crime but not formally charged could be put under house arrest for six months.

The amendment would allow the “residential detention” to be moved to an undisclosed location in “special cases involving national security, terrorism and major bribery, if detaining the suspect at his home will put an obstacle on solving the case,” the legal newspaper reported. The location would not be a “regular detention center or police station.”

See also a report from AFP. And the Siweiluozi blog comments on the proposed reforms:

Based solely on what has been written here, this is a rather shocking development. It means that, for example, individuals suspected of “inciting subversion,” can be taken into custody by police and held in a designated location (as long as it’s not a place of detention) for up to six months without any need to notify anyone of their whereabouts or the charges against them. All on the pretext of “impeding the investigation,” a vague criterion that police investigating these types of cases should have little difficulty convincing their superiors of.

Readers of this blog (among others) will recognize that were this to become law, it would essentially give legal cover to the sort of enforced disappearance that befell Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei, Liu Shihui, and others. Rather than closing the loopholes that police have been using to engage in this sort of activity, China’s legislators seem set to legitimize it.

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Many China experts have noted that the protests arise because China does not afford citizens either open political institutions for changing power or transparent legal institutions for holding officials and businesses to account. Chinese seeking open resolution of disputes are often thwarted and driven to the streets. Moreover, superiors in the party or the government judge local officials by their ability to minimize civil protests, rather than by their capacity to develop legitimate political or legal outlets to address grievances. And, with political or legal institutions ineffective, the suppression of protest by corrupt officials only generates more discontent and more demonstrations.

To be sure, China is in the midst of enacting, if not enforcing, a vast array of new laws — and of increasing the numbers of lawyers and judges with meaningful legal training. (See, for example, the website of Yale Law School’s, China Law Center, or Harvard Law’s China Studies site.) China is making slow if discernible progress towards a legal system and major legal institutions that have enhanced independence and make some decisions based on law, not politics, maintains Yale’s Jamie Horsley.

Yet the vast legal system (more than 3,000 courts and nearly 200,000 judges) is still plagued by lack of training, competency, and professionalism. Moreover, Horsley herself concludes: “despite the growth of an increasingly robust legal system and broader legal consciousness in the general population, the Communist Party retains ultimate control, especially over the handling of sensitive political, economic, and social issues.” Corruption by party, state and state-enterprise officials is one of those “sensitive” areas. Lack of local enforcement remains a major problem. Party discipline, if and when it occurs, is often secret and undermines the legal system because it takes place outside of it.

Although authorities may use the carrot and give in to demands of some protesters, suppression by force, by abuse of “law,” by harassment and intimidation and by networks of informers is the current preferred means of addressing civil protests. It is the case especially after the tumult of the Arab Spring caused fears of destabilizing demonstrations in China. (And China is even more forceful in stamping out any protest movement which could go national.) This repression only exacerbates the recurring problem: an absence of open and accountable political and legal institutions which would allow protests to be channeled away from the street. Importantly, by stunting open politics and law, this approach to civil unrest fosters continued corruption in a society awash in money from investment and growth. But this corruption — both in the sense of officials/cadres taking money illicitly or in the arbitrary use of “law” for personal ends — only increases, in turn, the pressure for protests. And the great fear of the national government, of course, is that these protests will, at some point, turn into a national movement.

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