China’s Rule of Law With CCP Characteristics
Udumbara
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The rule of law is arbitrary in communist China.
Every once in a while, Chinese leader Xi Jinping makes a grand announcement that makes a person laugh out loud. His statement on Nov. 18 was one such event, as parroted by state-run China Daily: “President Xi Jinping has called for upholding the unity between Party leadership, the running of the country by the people and law-based governance, and making concerted efforts to break new ground in advancing the rule of law in China.”
Incredible! The highfalutin gobbledygook of that sentence is quite meaningless, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) determines what the law is, who it applies to, and how it is applied every single minute of every day in China.
Chinese Legal System
“Four Cardinal Principles” frame the Chinese legal system: uphold the socialist road, uphold the people’s “democratic dictatorship,” uphold CCP leadership, and uphold Marxism-Leninism (and ”Mao Zedong Thought“ and ”Xi Jinping Thought").Note that while a written Chinese Constitution exists, there are no constitutional protections under Chinese law, especially for the 1.3 billion Chinese who aren’t CCP members.
National People’s Congress and Its Standing Committee
The National People’s Congress (NPC), a rubber-stamp legislature, writes and modifies Chinese law. It is composed entirely of CCP members plus a handful of minor party members who are completely controlled by the CCP.State Council
This executive-level body issues the vast majority of day-to-day rules in the form of “administrative regulations” that actually govern economic, social, and administrative life in China. The council issues up to 30 regulations per year, all of which have binding legal force in the communist system.Supreme People’s Court
The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) essentially runs the entire Chinese judicial system. The real working law in China is the law as interpreted and administered by the SPC, not the bare text passed by the NPC.Supreme People’s Procuratorate
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) is the highest prosecutorial organ in China. The SPP and its local branches have the exclusive right under Chinese law to bring criminal charges in court. Specifically, Article 134 of the Constitution gives procuratorates the authority to “exercise legal supervision over trial activities.”Police cannot file charges directly; all serious cases must go through a procuratorate decision to either be prosecuted or dropped. The SPP can also launch “public-interest litigation” by suing government agencies, state-owned enterprises, private companies, and individuals for “public crimes” such as harming the ecology, damaging food and drug safety, protecting the reputations of “heroes and martyrs,” and abusing state-owned land and property rights.
The SPP is one of the main instruments empowered by Xi Jinping’s ongoing anti-corruption campaigns, since public interest litigation is initiated by individual procurators without oversight (on direct orders).
National Supervision Commission
The commission is the highest supervisory organ in China, per Articles 123–127 of the Chinese Constitution, and the most powerful investigative and disciplinary body for matters involving public power, including issuing nationwide policy through “supervision suggestions” and joint interpretations.Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the CCP
Frequently referred to as the Zhengfawei, this body is a Party organ, not a state bureaucratic entity, that sits above the State Council, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the National Supervision Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of State Security in real decision-making involving the day-to-day administration and enforcement of virtually all Chinese law in practice.The secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission reports directly to the Politburo and Xi Jinping personally. To summarize how the Zhengfawei controls Chinese law at the behest of the Politburo and Xi: the National People’s Congress passes laws; the State Council, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the National Supervision Commission enforce them day-to-day.
Concluding Thoughts
There are many Chinese laws, and a complex mix of institutions, commissions, and legal bodies that administer and enforce them. However, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (Zhengfawei) acts on behalf of the Politburo and Xi Jinping to determine what those laws actually mean in a given year, which cases get prosecuted, and who wins or loses in the legal system.Xi speaks of “law-based governance” (unspecified) and “efforts to break new ground in advancing the rule of law.” It would appear that he really means to expand close coordination between the Zhengfawei and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate to arbitrarily promulgate new national policies and regulations through supervision suggestions, so that politically targeted violators can be quickly prosecuted by circumventing the established legal system.
So much for the rule of law with CCP characteristics.
