Deepening Shadows Over Chinese Law
- Commentary
Stanley Lubman, a long-time specialist on Chinese law, teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and is the author of “Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao,” (Stanford University Press, 1999).
Chinese president Hu Jintao addressed a “study session” of leaders last week and called for new measures and policies of “social management.” His message foretells a tightening of controls over China’s population and over social protest. Although the speech may have been provoked by recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, brutal treatment of dissidents was already ongoing. It has become more intense and it will continue.
Talk of a “Jasmine Revolution” online and a subsequent stepping up of censorship by Beijing authorities this week has helped thrust the Internet—microblogging in particular—to the center of the conversation around how China’s government manages problems at home.
But as the upheaval in Libya grows increasingly violent, microblogs are also serving to highlight a challenge China faces abroad: The presence of tens of thousands of Chinese nationals, many of them workers for state-owned enterprises, living in potential conflict zones in Africa and elsewhere.
Attempts by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to stimulate discussion on Internet freedom among Chinese microblog users ran up against Beijing’s sophisticated censorship apparatus Wednesday. Now it appears that this effort has landed the embassy’s official account on Sina Weibo, China’s most active microblogging platform, on censors’ watch list.
A list of what the Wall Street Journal’s reporters in China are reading and watching online, periodically updated throughout the day. (NOTE: WSJ has not verified items in the ‘News’ section and does not vouch for their accuracy.) Last updated: 9:05 pm Beijing time.
News:
More after the jump.
Reform-minded observers of Chinese media have characterized the rise of microblogging in the Middle Kingdom as a boon to dissidents and a challenge to the ruling regime. But, according to a report by the country’s state-run news agency, Chinese authorities aren’t ready to cede the technology to their critics.
On Christmas Day, Qian Yunhui, a villager in eastern Zhejiang province with a long history of petitioning against alleged abuses by local government, was crushed to death under the wheels of a heavy truck. That much is fact. Gruesome pictures of his mangled body circulated widely on the Internet within hours of his death.
But the online uproar that followed–and the response of local officials–offers a window into a new political reality in China, one that has profound implications for how this country is governed.
Was it a traffic accident, as some local officials insist? Or a homicide designed to silence a government critic, as many Internet users appear to believe?
While China's tightening control over social media and the Internet has attracted widespread attention lately, the government in also engaged in widespread, sometimes violent suppression of activist lawyers.
Beijing is getting very good at preventing color revolutions from becoming a national conversation about the shortcomings of governance. The main concern is the way that events in the Middle East could play out within the Communist Party.
With Internet activism seemingly on the rise in China, what are the chances social media pressure will lead to reform of China's corrupt legal system?
A new regulation promises to a practice considered one of the greatest threats to stability in China, but will it be effective?
As President Hu Jintao starts his trip to the United States, the real political drama for U.S.-China relations is what happens as Hu begins his political exit back in China.
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