From China Brief (Volume 8, Issue 2):
The opening line was short but dramatic: “With Rule of Law Day fast approaching, we renew our call: abolish the reeducation through labor system.” So wrote a group of nearly seventy prominent scholars, lawyers, activists and public intellectuals in a constitutional review proposal issued in November 2007. Addressed to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), the proposal laid out a number of reasons why — in the view of its signatories — the reeducation through labor system (laodong jiaoyang) should be scrapped [1].
The proposal managed to attract some media attention within China. This is not surprising, given that the list of signatories is comprised of a who’s who of liberal intellectuals and progressive legal activists in China, including prominent economist Mao Yushi, outspoken legal scholar He Weifang and public interest lawyer Li Fangping, among many others. Both Southern Weekend and the Justice Net, a website run by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, reported the details of the proposal in a generally positive light (Southern Weekend [Nanfang Zhoumo] and Justice Net [Zhengyi Wang], December 6, 2007). Yet the NPCSC has neither responded to the proposal nor acknowledged its receipt. [Full Text]
Thomas E. Kellogg is a Senior Fellow at the China Law Center of Yale Law School and a lecturer-in-law at Yale Law School. Keith Hand is a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School’s China Law Center.
