From The Wall Street Journal:
The earthquake that rocked Sichuan province is emerging as an unexpected test of China’s evolving legal system.
Parents in Sichuan whose children were killed when schools collapsed in the May 12 quake are already demanding justice. Huang Lianghe, who lost his son in the collapse of the Dongqi Middle School in Dujiangyan, believes the quality of the school’s construction was at fault and, with other parents, is looking for a good lawyer to take up his cause.
That Mr. Huang has that much faith in China’s courts says much about rising expectations that ordinary Chinese enjoy basic legal rights, including the right to sue their government.
On television and the Internet, a new generation of Chinese lawyers teaches ordinary Chinese people to invoke their rights. At camps for survivors of the quake, volunteers recently distributed “law promotion” handbooks published by the Chengdu Justice Bureau that explain the laws that victims can use to sue government officials for certifying the building codes for thousands of classrooms that crumbled in the quake.
Read also Excerpts: Lawyer Liu On China’s Legal System.
