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CIAO DATE: 6/5/2006
China: The Balance Sheet - Background Papers
April 2006
Abstract
Western media reporting on China does not give the impression of a rule of law country. We read of frequent corruption scandals, a harsh criminal justice system still plagued by the use of torture, increasingly violent and widespread social unrest over unpaid wages, environmental degradation and irregular takings of land and housing. Outspoken academics, activist lawyers, investigative journalists and other champions of the disadvantaged and unfortunate are arrested, restrained or lose their jobs. Entrepreneurs have their successful businesses expropriated by local governments in seeming violation of the recently added Constitutional guarantee to protect private property. Citizens pursue their grievances more through extra-judicial avenues than in weak and politically submissive courts. Yet China's economy gallops ahead, apparently confounding conventional wisdom that economic development requires the rule of law.
At its core, “rule of law” connotes a system under which law acts as a curb on state and private power. One of the essential functions of a legal system in a transitional country like China is to provide and enforce rules to facilitate the emergence of private ordering in a market economy. Rules are to be set in advance and applied consistently, equally, transparently and uniformly by independent courts that serve as a backstop to protect civil, property, political and human rights. China's leaders also promote another essential function of law, which is to order and regulate the exercise of government power. China is in the process of developing a solid body of administrative law to help restructure the functions and operation of formerly all-powerful government bureaucracies, so as to limit their interference with market activity while implementing systems to achieve rational regulation and more effective social management.
