7 ms·

The recent press release of Ai Weiwei comes to mind, perhaps particularly this: > There are no clear laws, only interpretations of the law based on the Party’s

• TazeTSchnitzel 8y ago
  The Constitution of the Soviet Union guaranteed, among other things, freedom of speech.
  • pas 8y ago
    Maybe the PRC's constitution does the same, but there are always exceptions, for example for national security.
    • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      Any garauntee in the constitution is meaningless since the judiciary in China is not allowed to use it as a way to invalidate law. The party itself gets to decide whether they are following the constitution or not, imagine if Trump could make his executive orders without worrying about federal judges throwing them out.
      • duxup 8y ago
        Heck even the party has had issues with the judiciary at lower levels (things that didn't involve the party) where they found judges with limited education making strange decisions based on flawed logic, and of course low level corruption. While I'm sure they don't have any intention of making the judiciary independent, there were signs that even party members were a bit dismayed by some of the decisions if only because they were worried about public perception. I belive they talked about launching some educational efforts.
        • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
          Judges aren’t really that prestigious in China because they are dwarfed in power and influence by officials, so as a result it doesn’t attract the best people.
          • duxup 8y ago
            Yeah that is the impression I got too. Just another job to get if you're connected, but not really a good one. The result is a bit predictable.
    • jorblumesea 8y ago
      The point is it doesn't matter what is on paper, it's enforcement that matters. China can write whatever it wants, but it's actions that count. They are implementing a social credit system and actively censoring all communication platforms, who cares what their constitution says? It clearly doesn't matter what is written down. To go back to the original quote: > There are no clear laws, only interpretations of the law based on the Party’s interests. China is not a nation under the rule of law. China is a nation under the rule of the Party.
    • schuke 8y ago
      In reality national security is interpreted and enforced in such way that all free speech is a threat.
      • vivekd 8y ago
        Not defending China's level of freedom here, but our system in the West is increasingly moving in that direction. Our governments increasingly interpret national security and public safety unreasonably broadly to curtail basic freedoms
        • shhehebehdh 8y ago
          No, it is not, at least if by West you mean to include the United States. There has never been a point in US history where we have been more free to say anything and everything.
        • schuke 8y ago
          Certainly there have been cases in the West where free speech are curtailed due to concern or anxiety over national security. But while you guys are traveling north from Hawaii , we are already in the Arctic.
  • Pharmakon 8y ago
    As the Radio Yerevan jokes went: Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it true that there is freedom of speech in the Soviet Union the same as there is the USA?" Radio Yerevan answered: "In principle, yes. In the USA, you can stand in front of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, and yell, ´Down with Reagan!´, and you will not be punished. In the Soviet Union, you can stand in the Red Square in Moscow and yell, ´Down with Reagan!´, and you will not be punished. And Q: What is the difference between the Constitutions of the USA and USSR? Both guarantee freedom of speech. A: Yes, and the US Constitution also guarantees freedom after speech.
• awakeasleep 8y ago
  It's frustrating to consider how that same standard applies to the USA. We certainly have enough laws that everyone is a criminal and selective enforcement perverts the idea of justice. Of course, I'm not saying things are equally as corrupt as they are in China, but we're definitely on the same spectrum. Maybe the difference is, in the USA, "The Party" includes both big business AND the government.
  • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    It is always a spectrum. America is hardly perfect, but rule of law in the states is much more developed than in China. Especially constitutional law, which the CCP sees as a western abomination (so the Chinese constitution garauntees freedom of speech, religion, and so on, but is meaningless because the judiciary is not a check on the party).
    • threeseed 8y ago
      You only have to look at China's religious "re-education" camps to know that the government in no way defers to the Constitution or any other laws.
    • logicchains 8y ago
      "Article 51. Non-infringement of rights Citizens of the People's Republic of China, in exercising their freedoms and rights, may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens." So the constitution, even if followed perfectly, technically only guarantees such rights when they don't interfere with the interests of the state.
      • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
        Sure. It basically means “the right is guaranteed, unless we don’t want to”. Which makes it meaningless in practice.
  • toxik 8y ago
    The US has an independent and democratic justice system. They are not on the same spectrum.
• hitsholy 8y ago
  Chinese constitution: "No state organization, social group or individual may force a citizen to accept or not to accept a religious faith, nor can they discriminate against either religious or non-religious citizens." Chinese government has - placed 1M muslims into internment camp - forced muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol - arrested muslims observing Ramedan - placed muslims in "re-education centers" to forcefully convert them. I don't trust anything this evil government says.
  • dkural 8y ago
    Here's some journalism on the matter: Washington Post: "China is creating concentration camps in Xinjiang. Here’s how we hold it accountable.": https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/china-is-creating-concentration-camps-in-xinjiang-heres-how-we-hold-it-accountable/2018/11/23/93dd8c34-e9d6-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html?utm_term=.bd6d4e5dd86a https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/china-is-creating-co... NYTimes: "China Is Detaining Muslims in Vast Numbers. The Goal: ‘Transformation.’" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-m... "China’s Detention Camps for Muslims Turn to Forced Labor" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china-forced-labor-camps-uighurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china... https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/07/reeducating-xinjiangs-muslims/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/02/07/reeducating-xinj... The parent comment calls this evil. Whole-scale internment of an entire population without any legal due process; resulting in deaths of those who resist; does fit the bill.
  • logicchains 8y ago
    If you read the two paragraphs after that: "The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination." The Chinese government justifies their actions in Xinjiang as an attempt to prevent extremism (terrorists disrupting public order) and prevent foreign extremist influence, so technically the government could claim its actions in Xinjiang are "protecting normal religious activities". The statement that "religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination" could allow it to argue that it's free to define Islam however it sees fit, such that it could claim things like Ramedan are artifacts of foreign domination. Note that the government is not arbitrarily oppressing muslims; the muslim Hui minority are not being locked up, as they haven't been pressing for independence. The Chinese government doesn't care about religion, what it cares about is stopping anyone who tries to resist it, such as separatists, and the separatists in Xinjiang just happen to be muslims, and the government sees their religion as a motivating factor behind their separatism. Of course, this doesn't make it any more acceptable, I'm just pointing out that the Constitution as written gives the government a lot of leeway to do such things without technically breaching it. Another line: "Article 51. Non-infringement of rights Citizens of the People's Republic of China, in exercising their freedoms and rights, may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens." So the government could justify pretty much anything in the name of not allowing people to "infringe upon the interests of the state".
• vinceguidry 8y ago
  He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. Rule by humans is the default, 'natural' way of organizing human behavior, and innovations over that have to be iterated slowly. We simply cannot expect Western philosophical concepts, as great as they are, to simply be transplantable in other parts of the world just cuz it worked so great for us. Or does Mr. Weiwei expect the Chinese Communist Party to willfully give up power in order to put itself under a legal regime? Even Europe has moving slowly away from rule of law towards rule by international technocratic bureaucracy, borne out of the need to make a historically extremely heterogenous landmass peaceful. The UK was never going to be part of that tribe, it's fine with its rule of law.
  • barry-cotter 8y ago
    > He's... not wrong. But it's important to realize that rule of law is an Anglo legal and cultural invention. And Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German (speaking), Finnish, Latvian, Estonian at a minimum. The rule of law is very much not an Anglo thing. Outside North(Western) Europe where the rule of law absolutely was a thing you’d be pretty hard pressed to deny that it was never present in Iberia, particularly Aragon, Italy or the entirety of both Latin and Orthodox Christendom. Hell, the Ottoman Empire’s kanun law was based on... canon law. A government of laws, not men was an ideal dating back to Rome and indeed much earlier. But Christianity preserved Roman law. There were clearly areas that approached rule of law more and less closely but the idea that it’s an Anglo thing is historically ignorant to a ridiculous degree. How closely any particular state approached it varied a great deal, France and Hungary weren’t Prussia or Russia but they certainly weren’t England or Holland either. If you want to learn more about the various ways premodern societies ordered themselves Francis Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order, is a great place to start.
    • vinceguidry 8y ago
      Having laws, is not the same thing as having the rule of law. Rule of law refers to something quite specific. That at the very precipice of organizing principles of society, the people at that precipice, are themselves governed by law. Rule of law means we don't have to worry about Trump turning America into a dictatorship. If you have to worry about your leaders running away with power, then you don't have rule of law. The idea that Germany, of all countries, has the rule of law is absolutely laughable. This is the country that started WW2 for lebensraum. Everything Hitler did was totally legal. But he still was an autocrat. This is because Germany did not have the rule of law. Maybe after WW2 Germany figured out how to make sure their leaders can't seize total political control. I'd have to go look. But there's no way under the sun they had it before.
• webmobdev 8y ago
  It's easy to make laws, it's the interpretation and implementation that's the real test.