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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, November 12, 2018

This is the first of a two-part interview with Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, founder and chief editor of China Law Translate and an expert on China’s social credit system. To skip to Part 2 of the interview series, click here.

China’s social credit system and its implications for citizen and corporate data, has largely been described by the Western press as “dystopian” and “Orwellian”; it has been compared to the British television show “Black Mirror” and the Hollywood blockbuster “Minority Report”- stories of technology out of control.  It has been used to show what could come to the West if we are not careful with our technology.

But is that what China’s social credit system really is?  We sat down with Jeremy Daum, senior research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, and the founder and chief editor of China Law Translate.  At China Law Translate, Jeremy

Yale Law Senior Researcher & China Law Translate founder, Jeremy Daum

has translated numerous government directives, policy pieces and local regulations on China’s social credit system, making him an expert on this emerging system.  He has also written a slew of informative articles and has just come out with a podcast that gives a general overview of social credit.  But to get a better understanding of China’s social credit, what it is, is it different from the West and what are the real threats within the system, we now turn to Jeremy.

Read the transcript below for Part I of this two-part interview, where Jeremy gives us the background on social credit, explains that there is no “score” and does a deep dive on the judgment defaulter blacklist.  Or click the media player below to listen (total time – 42:03).

CL&P:     All right. Thank you again Jeremy for taking the time to sit down today to give us the T, the truth on China’s social credit system. I guess let’s start with the beginning.

JD:      Sure.

CL&P:     What exactly is social credit? When did it come about? Can you give us some background on this idea in China now that its this social credit system?

JD:      It’s a big question what it is. I think it refers to a lot of different systems. It’s probably just a working name at this point.  But social credit is a lot of ideas linked by the concept of centralizing data to assess credibility, but it’s taking a lot of different forms. I would say that primarily what people talk about, there’s three big parts of it that we could discuss. The first of those is similar to financial credit evaluations in other countries. It’s about trying to make sure the financial credit extends to more and more people.

President Xi Jinping instituted China’s social credit system.

The other is an administrative regulatory system that involves blacklists that we’ve heard about where various agencies put people on blacklists for violations in their fields. The third major area I think we can talk about, is a moral education component of the government trying to extend the concept of sincerity and trust throughout society. We’ve all heard about the extent of fraud and dishonesty that is rampant in some Chinese markets, and I think they’re trying to address that as well. There are other pieces including government transparency [which] is government social credit. I think those three main areas are a good way to think about it.

CL&P:     Just in terms of background are there currently national laws, local regulations? What is the law that’s bringing this about, the social credit system?

JD:      There’s already quite a bit of authority in effect. Some of it is provisional regulations, but some of it is fully up there. The one that you see cited in media reports a lot is this outline plan – the 2014 through 2020 outline for establishing a social credit system. That, I have a roadmap of that as I call it of my site where I try to just pull out all the action items. Even doing that it comes out as 11 pages of document, just saying all the things it wants to do. But mainly it’s a list by different fields including education, the internet, food safety and what they will do to establish social credit in areas like that. But in addition to that planning outline, a lot of more practical, implementable law has started to come out.

There are blacklists in almost every regulated industry at this point. And rules for how a person gets on those blacklists, how a person gets off those blacklists and how long information remains on them. A few areas have their own local provincial level regulations, which is a high level of authority governing a more comprehensive idea of the social credit system. There’s a lot out there including guiding documents down to very specific implementation rules.

CL&P:     On the national level though, you don’t have an actual law, you have a plan, a policy plan?

JD:      Yes, at this point we have a plan, but there’s also quite a few normative documents. These are things calling from the National Reform and Development Committee.  Calling for the blacklists to be created; calling for each ministry to create its blacklist; calling for the creation of a unified social credit code for both people, natural persons as well as corporations. All of the local rules are usually in response to a national level mandate.

CL&P:     Just to clarify, I think there’s been a lot of perception in the Western media about the social credit system and there being a credit score. You mentioned that one of the aspects is this financial credit that’s similar, but does the social credit system itself institute a credit score? I guess for those in the US who are used to a FICO credit score. How is what’s going on here different or similar or. . .?

JD:      It’s important I think to address score. A lot of places have shown a three digit number based on the US model. Some people –

CL&P:     When you say a lot of places do you mean –

JD:      I mean media, media. A lot of media has reported on that. Wired had an article: a three digit score could control your life or determine your place in society. There are scores involved in this, but let’s back up. Even in that financial component, which I call the credit reporting component of social credit. It actually uses a different uses a different word. It doesn’t use 信用，which is usually credit or trust in Chinese. It uses 征信, which is the same 信 but a slightly different word, and I translate it as “credit reporting.” I do that rather than scoring because it doesn’t necessarily imply giving a score even in that context.

For example, right now the People’s Bank of China does have a personal credit reporting system using that 征信.  But what they put out actually doesn’t give a score. It’s a list of debts and obligations and asset evaluations, but it doesn’t give an ultimate score. It just gives a data sheet that a lender might be interested in seeing. So with credit reporting private companies might base on some of the data that they get start to give scores that would be useful to people, but that would be a credit product they’re offering to people. That’s what we’re talking about the financial situation.  What people are really interested in and what I think is sexy about the idea of social credit is the idea that people are being rated and evaluated in some sort of a holistic way. That actually there is no score. There isn’t even really a holistic evaluation of people in any way.

There are a few local pilots that do give people scores, that do seem to be a sort of “citizenship score.” The idea is this will in some way tell you how good a person this is. It considers a lot of different things like doing charity work and volunteer work. I view those primarily from my main research focus where I’m a criminal procedure researcher and I look to see how state power is used to enforce these lists. What I found is that in all of these point systems, there are no consequences of a “bad score.” There are some minimal rewards for “good scores” – often things like you get your lawn mowed for free or you don’t have to participate in some other mandatory obligation of sorting recycling or something to this effect. There’s some mild benefits. Not dissimilar to what being a model worker or model family used to be in the old days. I would call it more of an educational system. This is part of that educational component trying to convince people sincerity is an important value rather than anything like an enforcement mechanism of any kind.

CL&P:     Okay, so it’s just to promote positive behavior and not necessarily to punish negative behavior. It would just be in this sphere of charity work, doing good work?

JD:      Well some of them are holistic and are trying to … They would include things like if you had a criminal violation, they would count that in, but what they’re doing with that in that context is making the score that doesn’t have any real negative consequences besides maybe shaming. Which might be there. I’ve seen very minimal. One of the most extreme that I’ve heard about is you got a larger share of communal farming profits if you had a high score in one of these systems. These scores are really a very minimal part of what going on and don’t really have teeth.

Shanghai for example is the example I’d like to raise the most where they do have an app that gives a score. Shanghai is a big modern city. But this app is entirely voluntary. There are no consequences attached to it.  But Shanghai is one of the cities with a full regulation, a social credit regulation available. The regulations themselves don’t mention a score, don’t mention this app anywhere in it. This app is just a promotional tool, a publicity stunt at worst, an educational device at best.

CL&P:     Going back to social credit in general and the three aspects that you talked about. The financial credit, the administrative regulatory, the blacklisting and then the moral education. When did the Chinese government start with this plan? When was the plan initially rolled out and why are they doing this now?

JD:      Let’s take it backwards, social credit has existed in a few incarnations. The modern incarnation is really within the span of that plan I mentioned, the overarching plan. Why are they doing it? Well, within the financial credit sector there is still a huge percentage of China’s population, I hear estimates of two thirds, that are the unbanked. They simply do not have a profile in the banking system’s personal credit system. The banks, the government hopes to reach them with credit because a credit economy grows faster, people can have money in two places at once. They needed something to base lending to these people on. If they had never taken out a loan, never bought a house, never had a mortgage, they had to look to other factors. Actually looking to foreign models they had the idea what if we look to some other indicators that this is a good person.

So far, that hasn’t panned out in China. Where the systems, including Sesame Credit run by Ant Financial, that have tried to create an alternative evaluation of a person’s credit as a borrower, ultimately it didn’t seem to be a good indicator of whether they would be good at returning debts and they had a conflict of interest where they were basing it mainly on how much was spent on their own products. That made it even more unreliable.  But beyond the financial sector, there is a trust crisis in China. One example that I like to bring up is a terrible story that happened a little while ago at a kindergarten here in Beijing, that I think did make international news. A rumor began that a teacher was injecting students with something. Then this grew into a larger rumor that they were drugging students and sexually abusing them at this kindergarten. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, of course.

The police then go and investigate. What their investigation finds is that there was a teacher who was in fact pricking students fingers with a needle as punishment, but they weren’t drugging them and there was no real indication of sexual abuse. But from this rumor starting we can see the lack of trust on all sides and how quickly it spreads. The parents were willing to believe that their teachers would do this to their children and then try and cover it up. But they would further believe that the police, rather than have this international embarrassment, would fake an investigation and pretend this wasn’t happening to children in their own country just to make it blow over. There’s the lack of trust on all sides. Nobody trusts anyone. The school can’t trust its parents. No one trusts what the kids are saying and people are ready to believe that the police are engaged in a massive cover-up.

A quicker shorter example would be just thinking of how food safety violations traditionally have happened in China. Not everyone is as high profile as the milk powder scandals of a few years back but product safety in the food area has been a real issue. What used to happen was when you got fined or discovered for these major safety issues, you would simply reincorporate under another name and start doing business. No one would attach this bad will to you or know to be afraid of the products. So people creating shoddy goods could keep doing it in various forms. Part of what the social credit system hopes to do with these real name systems and unified codes is to make it so you can’t escape this record. Now of course that only follows you for a certain amount of time, and you can recover a reputation, but it’s to make it so you can’t just dodge the administrative regulation.

Would you sue your teacher?

CL&P:     Just to follow-up on that, that’s interesting because. . . I don’t know that the United States has any more trust than what you have or a lack of trust, but what you do have is a functioning legal system, you have a much more transparent government. Why is the Chinese government choosing to go what to me seems like a much more convoluted route where it’s top-down to impose this trust system as opposed to something bottom-up where, “Well this teacher can be sued, if this was America.” This teacher can be sued for pricking children. You get a discovery, you find out what’s happening and you have transparency with the police and the investigation, you have transparency in the court system. Why is the Chinese government choosing to go what to me just seems like a much harder route to instill trust or to instill a system where trust is. . . where you trust the system?

JD:      I don’t think it is a harder route. I won’t get into the reasons why people lack trust except that it’s important in all context to remember exactly how quickly China has developed. The culture has urbanized at an amazing pace. As for American’s trust, I think we actually have an undue amount of trust where I really do believe the FDA has made sure that packaged foods and processed foods that get to me are going to be safe. People from the FDA have told me that might be misplaced faith. Our companies through regulation, but also through litigation like you said, have learned to be more proactive about recalls. Most of the recalls are voluntary, et cetera. Is China taking a harder route to establish trust? I don’t think so.

I think it only sounds that way if you’re overthinking what social credit is again. Because what it really is, is that they’re just making sure. . . and again, this is mainly that middle core of administrative regulations, the most active currently in social credit. What they’re doing is they’re making sure that administrative records, and that primarily includes what they call the double designations of administrative punishments and administrative permits, that those are linked both to corporations by that unique number, but also to the leaders of that corporation, so they can’t just go start a new company somewhere. It’s really just about making the data accessible. It’s not imposing new obligations. It’s not making a complicated new ranking system. It’s really about making that data accessible.

Trying to lift the corporate veil. Will it work?

CL&P:     Which is not too far . . . I know working in the United States, working in landlord-tenant, you do see a lot of bad landlords that hide behind the corporate form and are doing horrible things. That’s something we fought for is to try to see behind that corporate form and that we’ve gotten pushed back in the United States. That does seem like a good thing to have greater transparency.

JD:      It’s funny because one of the most invasive parts of the actual social credit plans, contrary to what you see emphasized in media reports, is this “through the corporate veil.”  The fact that the actual controller, even primary shareholders can be held accountable for the conduct of a company. That could be really risky for individual rights. But what’s interesting is I think that part would actually sell really well to most of the American public.

CL&P:     Yeah.

JD:      I think that a lot of people have frustration that CEOs seem to walk away with golden parachutes from corporate misconduct. This system does, at least in form, look like it’s made to prevent that. Again, I think the main reason for it here is just to stop the people from repeating their offense in a different form. You see a lot of professional certification bans where somebody who is on a serious blacklist, wouldn’t be allowed to be the manager of a company in that field again after they had a violation. So if I created poisoned powdered milk, I wouldn’t be allowed to open another powdered milk plant within a certain period of time.

CL&P:     Right. Right. Let’s go back to the blacklists because I feel like that’s something that has gotten a lot of attention in the Western media too. Can you give a little bit more description, what exactly are these blacklists? Who are making these blacklists? How public are these blacklists? Can you give a little bit more information about the blacklists?

JD:      Yeah. Understand the blacklists, which is the administrative regulatory part of the system, which is currently the most active, in my mind by far, part of the system. It’s really a three step thing to understand. The first is real name registrations. Real name applies to when it’s a real person, a natural person. You have to give your real name to get a bank account. You have to give your real name to get a phone. And there’s limits on how many of these things you can get so that you don’t get 20 phones in your name and then give them out to your friends so they are not using their real name. Internet connections, real name. And that’s usually by the way real name behind the scenes. So the company you’re doing it with creates a real name, but if I’m going onto an online service, usually up front I can still use an alias to the public, but they have to have my real name on file somewhere.

CL&P:     So you can still be Bunny Honey.

JD:      I can still be Bunny Honey if I want, yes. Everything gets linked back to your real name should somebody need to figure out who’s responsible for something. Now that’s important because that is going to make all of your acts go into a file essentially. Which is why it gets compared a lot to China’s old 档案(“dang’an”) system, the archive system.

The second step is the blacklist creation. All of the administrative agencies were charged with creating standards for who would get put on these lists within their area of regulation. Those standards are when you violate a certain level of law, then we’re going to put you on it. They also in addition to the blacklists have red lists, which are for positive behavior. And they have warning lists, which they call “key scrutiny lists” sometimes. These are for behavior that was negative, but not quite bad enough to get you on the blacklist. The blacklist is usually a pretty high standard. Now again, this isn’t for generalized bad conduct. This is for certain violations within their authority. Often we even say you have to receive an administrative punishment for this.

CL&P:     Okay.

JD:      What getting on the blacklist does is, and these are industry specific blacklists that each area creates based on their regulatory jurisdiction, so the blacklists though do get centralized on this unified credit platform, which sounds way menacing until you realize it’s a website. What this means is monthly or so they send over the list of people who are to be entered into the blacklist for that particular area. These are searchable. They get released and you can Google or Baidu for them. You see wave one of such and such blacklist, wave two. It used to be easier to find some of them, but now it’s a little harder.

Then the third step of it is the more controversial one, which is that through Memorandums Of Understanding (“MOU”) between different agencies, between different ministries and different regulatory areas, there will be some joint punishment of people who are on the blacklists. Now what I have noticed in reviewing all of these blacklists and MOUs is that the joint enforcement has a few unique characteristics that make it different than the other, sorry than the industry specific punishments. A great example is the No-Fly List. The No-Fly List blacklist breaks down the negative conduct into two distinct types. The first type is aviation misconduct. If you get in a fight with a person at the boarding gate, yeah they’re not going to let you on the plane.

CL&P:     That would be the industry blacklist?

JD:      Exactly. That gets you on the industry’s blacklist-

CL&P:     Because you violated a specific industry regulation. In that regard do you get . . . I know you said they’re industry specific, there’s usually an administrative punishment. Will there be some kind of process by which you are informed that you’ve been put on the blacklist, that you’ve been informed you violated the law.

JD:      Yeah. Before you get-

CL&P:     Industry blacklists.

JD:      Right. In most situations an attack on a boarding gate ticket checker is a spur of the moment violation, but usually when you’re being alerted of misconduct they’ll tell you that one possible consequence of this misconduct is being placed on the blacklist. You’ll see that most of the blacklist standards, these rules laying out how the blacklist is created, will actually mandate that. That you have to get this warning. Then you get warned when you’re actually entered on it again. If there’s an administrative punishment involved, you have the normal remedies involved there of having administrative reconsideration or administrative litigation in the courts to fight it.

CL&P:     Okay, it’s like if you jump a turnstile on a New York City subway, you get a ticket from the police officer. If you want to fight it you go to the Transit Bureau Court System.

JD:      Right. There are in theory ways to be arguing against this, China’s system being what it is, you might find this unreliable. But yes, there are methods. Those in an aviation specific offense that gets you banned from the plane, that’s what could have happened before already.

CL&P:     Right.

JD:      That’s just the Civil Aviation Administration doing its thing. It has to give a punishment within its sphere of power, and so it’s going to block you for this misconduct.

The second category though that they concern themselves on the blacklist is some of these joint offenses. That includes things like where you’ve been given a securities violations fine.

CL&P:     Okay.

JD:      Here it’s a little different because it’s not just punitive. It’s not just you get a fine for your securities violation and you can’t ride planes, that’s your punishment. It’s coercive, you can get off of that by paying the fine. It’s meant to make you do something. The most famous example of this and the most commonly confused with being the entire social credit system is the court judgment defaulters blacklist. Part of this is a legal jargon problem that people have mistranslated it. What it literally should be is a list of people who have defaulted on obligations from an enforcement court. What that means is that an enforcement division of a Court has issued a ruling that says, “You have either failed to perform on a court award at a civil trial or you were given an administrative punishment, didn’t pay that fine, didn’t act on it.” Then the administrative organ went to the Enforcement Court and got a court judgment saying-

CL&P:     – You got a court judgment against you –

JD:      – You had failed to fulfill your obligations there. That one has an MOU. The criteria for the blacklist there is failure to perform on an enforcement judgment, which is a single criteria. But because it has court judgment involved maybe, more ministries, more departments, are willing to sign on for joint enforcement of it. It has really wide reaching consequences, including a plane ban, a ban on riding on the best trains, some that I really don’t care for, like your children can’t go to private schools. These are all called limits on high spending or high consumption.

CL&P:     Let me just for our listeners that are based out of China. I mean I guess how different is this from what’s going on in some sectors of the United States, right? I know from my practice in New York State if you have a state tax debt of a certain amount, I think it’s maybe about $50,000, I forget, but a lot of people do. Then the New York State Tax Authority informs the Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Motor Vehicles revokes your license. Is that different? How similar is that to what’s going on here with these joint enforcement of punishments?

JD:      It’s the same concept and I think when there’s a court judgment in play, a lot of countries don’t have as much problem having these auxiliary or supplementary consequences to get you to pay. The idea is that you’ve had your due process and now you should be doing it. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Suspending driver’s licenses in the US is going to make it harder for you to earn money to pay back those judgments.

CL&P:     Exactly.

JD:      In China the idea is that most of these awards are going to be monetary and you shouldn’t be spending a lot of money if you haven’t paid back this award. Your money should be going to fix that problem.

Reading a judgment in a Chinese court

CL&P:     Let me ask another question. In the United States when you get a money judgment against somebody you can garnish their wages, you can put a lien on any property they own. You can do a search to figure out what are their assets and how do I get the money out of those assets? Why is that not a system that’s working here in China? Why are they going this route of having this joint enforcement blacklist to enforce court judgments?

JD:      They have similar procedures here, it just haven’t proven effective enough. That could be because individuals don’t always have the assets. It could be because they have legal mechanisms for shuffling them around and they’ve tried this as much. But this is aimed to get at the individual. The best way to think about that is if you look at what it’s; the judgment defaulter is a corporation and we talked about going behind the corporate form. Instead of just getting the corporation, we’re going to make it so the CEO’s kid can’t go to private school and the CEO can’t fly on a plane. Now do I agree with that? No, I think that actually has a lot of problems. One of the main problems is it treats all court judgments as equal and I think that say a judgment for me to give a formal apology to somebody or to visit my mom more often on the holidays is very different than an environmental polluter’s judgment to clean up an eco-disaster.

CL&P:     Right, right.

JD:      I don’t think the consequences should be the same for those. Now the court does have some discretion, doesn’t have to impose all of these exactly the same, but my feeling is that more often than not it’s just they get a blanket restriction on high spending.

What is the impact of the social credit system on China’s farmers?

CL&P:     In terms of the high spending, that’s another interesting aspect I think of it is that they just are blacklisting high spending. They’re blacklisting you and it impacts your high spending stuff. It does seem like the repercussions or the targeting is more for rich people or corporations as you said. So to the extent that people captured by this it’s people who fly on planes, it’s people who take high speed rails, it’s people who send their kids to private school. How intentional was that? Because you still, you must have farmers in the countryside that are suing each other that will have a small judgment. Does the law take into blacklisting of them. And how intentional was it to go after people that are more economically well-off?

JD:      You’re right, there are limits on high spending and I think that’s because, like I said it’s seen that you should be fulfilling your financial obligations before you get to spend money on pleasure. Of course there’s farmers with disputes between them and people who don’t have means, it may not be as likely that they go through the court system to try and resolve those issues.

CL&P:     Okay, that’s true.

JD:      I think the crisis and certainly the part that holds back the economy is when it’s larger sums involved. It’s about clearing out these bigger cases. But mainly I think there’s also a feeling that this is in some way just. Like I said, that we’re not going to let you have fun until [you pay]. Now on a lower level there are some places that try things, even with the judgment defaulter list that are along the lines of shaming. That is a mechanism that would work beyond just limiting your own spending, but letting the public know. One place, blanking on where it was, but has it where you’re on the judgment defaulter list when people call your phone, before it picks up, instead of playing a nice waiting music, it plays a message that they are calling a person who is on the judgment defaulter list and they should be careful with you.

People have said that they actually do get pressure from their peer groups from being on this list. I think that would be a great study if someone wanted to look into something about what’s really happening with social credit is whether this is actually working. Are court judgments getting enforced more effectively? Are people not wanting to be on the blacklist. It’s a great area for research. We’ve seen some stuff about public opinion of social credit, but social credit is such an expansive term and really a work in progress as a term that covers so many different programs that I don’t think it gets too much. Whereas the judgment defaulter list is pretty concrete item.

Altercations with flight attendants can get you banned from flying

CL&P:     I mean I guess that’s something that you’re touching upon that is interesting too is, yeah, to what extent do people really care if they’re on the blacklist for something stupid. Let’s say. . . to what extent do you think in Chinese society, young people, middle aged people actually care that they might be on a blacklist because they had words with a flight attendant and now they’re on the No-Fly List or something like that. Or to what extent is that a badge of “oh, hey, I had a fight with a flight attendant.” Or when you look in the United States like I know for doctors you can look up how many medical malpractice cases are against them. I always assume there’s going to be one or two because we’re a much more litigation happy society and I don’t really take it to heart. Now if there’s like 20 I might not go to that doctor. To what extent do you think this is influencing or shunning people from society?

JD:      The judgment defaulters list, to focus on that, that actually limits enough of your conduct that it’s going to have consequences as its goals. Most of the industry specific blacklists, and these MOUs that enforce them with joint enforcement, limited joint enforcement, I don’t think there’s a risk of anyone seeing it as a badge because what it really is is just you got an administrative fine, an administrative penalty, and they tend to be for fairly serious things, but professional things. The target of that is mainly corporations not individuals and the individuals primarily come into this by virtue of their association with a corporate entity. So being the actually controller, or stockholder, CEO, or the manager for who was responsible for a problem.

It’s not going to be so much even about you, you’re just going to be trying to fix the problem. If you worked for a factory anywhere where the environmental authorities came and said that you were just putting out too much exhaust or waste water and gave you a fine saying that you need to fix this, well that’s not ever going to be something like well I just don’t care. You’re going to have to deal with it. You might do a cost benefit analysis but you’re going to have to address it. That’s really all the industry specific blacklists are. It’s worth repeating that I have seen so far there are no new obligations imposed by social credit, it is just calling the obligation . . . It’s consolidating existing obligations and penalties into a blacklist for the more serious ones and warning list for less serious ones.

CL&P:     Has anybody done any studies like. . . let’s talk about the court blacklists which is the judgment default. Has anybody analyzed that blacklist to see how many are just average Joe’s that just got sued and how many are corporations doing bad things and haven’t paid their debts and the people associated with them so the CEOs that are behind them?

JD:      Yeah, so there’s been monthly, a really decent analytic reports and they don’t do the full social credit system but they do do the judgment defaulter system pretty well where they do give that sort of breakdown of how many natural persons. Now it’s important to remember that with that piercing the corporate veil aspect we talked about, corporations are going to have natural persons to go on the list with them, but the list for the judgment defaulters is always there and searchable. The monthly report tells you not only how many entities and real persons were put on the list in the month, but how many came off in the month. You can take a look at that at any time. I don’t have the list in front of me but it is a lot of people.  I think in September it was over 220,000 people got put on the list.

CL&P:     Okay. Just in terms of the corporations and the people associated with it. So what’s going on here on the defaulter judgment list is you’re putting people like the CEO individually and you are, in what we call in the United States, piercing the corporate veil.

JD:      Yeah.

CL&P:     To what extent, I mean in the United States you can’t really do that, it’s very, very hard to pierce the corporate veil, but here by putting somebody, giving them repercussions, let’s say CEO-

JD:      Legal representative or actual controller-

CL&P:     Putting them on the No-Fly List, they’re getting the repercussions of their corporation’s bad business-

JD:      That’s right.

CL&P:     – Bad acts. So to what extent is this creating a new liability for those people, or have you always been able to pierce the corporate veil under Chinese law?

JD:      That’s a good question. I think this is certainly a new, more direct consequence for them and even for individuals who are owing a court judgment, this is a new enforcement mechanism. Joint enforcement didn’t exist and there’s actually debate in Chinese legal circles if whether it’s legal. Because where’s the authorization for this. I think though even looking only at the judgment defaulters list I think that there’s still very much a live controversy over whether this is allowed towards anyone because where does the Civil Aviation Authority get its power to ban you from flying based on this court judgment, where is that coming from? Do the courts and the Civil Aviation Authority have that power unto themselves?

CL&P:     Right, right, right. In terms of the blacklist itself, can you get off of the blacklist?

JD:      The judgment defaulter list?

CL&P:     Yeah, the court, let’s stick with just the court one because that’s the easiest one.

JD:      Let’s call it the judgment defaulter list to make it clear because I know some reporting has thought there was a general credit blacklist that if you fall below a certain something then you’re on a certain magical citizenship list, but this is for judgment defaulters.

Your question was how do you get off it? You can perform, you can perform on the obligation. In theory, you should be able to show that you shouldn’t be on it in the first place. And you can show that you don’t have the ability to act on it because it’s supposed to only apply to people who are willful judgment defaulters. That is, you have the ability to perform but are not performing.

CL&P:     If you were let’s say the CEO of corporation X, corporation X doesn’t pay because corporation X is basically bankrupt, you’re on the No-Fly List, you can essentially petition, would it be the court or would it be. . .this is for the court default judgment blacklist. You can petition say look, I don’t have, my corporation doesn’t have enough money, I don’t have enough money, can you please take me off. Is that it?

JD:      That’s right. You would present the evidence in an appeal or a collateral appeal to show that either you’ve already performed and don’t owe this or that you’re somehow ineligible, which would include that you don’t have the ability to perform.

CL&P:     Okay, so this is sort like in the IRS, like I know with tax debt, there’s a currently not collectible status for individuals that are so low income it’s like getting blood from a stone and then they can go into that status.

JD:      Right, and this would be . . . it seems from this outsider’s point of view that it’s less proceduralized that it ought to be at this point. People have complained about trying to get off the list and get news about where they are, why they’re on the list and had trouble. I don’t doubt that, but I think that’s more of a bureaucratic problem than anything else.

CL&P:     Okay, so the bureaucracy is still being worked out and stuff.

JD:      Yeah.

CL&P:     Here’s another question, what about foreign corporations doing business with China? How does this impact them?

JD:      To my understanding when foreign corporations do business here they have to have a legal status here.

CL&P:     Right.

JD:      When they do, like United Airlines, they have a social credit number attached them. I think foundations as well. Anything that has a legal entity status here, that legal entity is part of the system.

This is the end of Part 1.  To read or listen to Part 2 of our interview with Jeremy Daum, click here.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, November 4, 2018

This coming Tuesday, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council will conduct China’s third periodic review.  Given the increasing authoritarianism of the Xi Jinping regime, many countries and NGO’s have filed critical submissions to the UN and have listed questions that the Human Rights Council should ask the Chinese delegation in regards to the country’s current human rights violations.  Expect the Chinese government’s illegal internment of millions of Uighurs in Xinjiang Autonomous Region to be a central issue. 

Today, Caitlin Hickey, Joey Lee, Reece Pelley and Elisabeth Wickeri, advocates from Fordham Law School’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice offer their insightful assessment of China’s major human rights violation: the continued – and increased – use of non-judicial, and at times illegal, arbitrary detention of people the Chinese government just doesn’t like.  While arbitrary detention will certainly arise in the context of the Xinjiang internment camps, the authors, in their guest blog post below, remind us that it is a far more prevalent practice, impacting other vulnerable populations, and that the U.N. should not forget to question the Chinese delegation about the government’s treatment of these vulnerable populations.

Left Behind on the Road Towards “Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics”:
China’s Universal Periodic Review and the Arbitrary Detention of Stigmatized Communities

Caitlin Hickey, Joey Lee, Reece Pelley, Elisabeth Wickeri*

As China prepares to present its human rights record before the full membership of the United Nations (UN) this Tuesday, we hear the beginnings of a familiar story. Leading up to its third appearance at the Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”)—a UN Human Rights Council mechanism through which each of the UN’s 193 Member States undergoes a human rights evaluation based on recommendations offered by fellow Member States—the Chinese government’s opening UPR statement invokes specialized national conditions, the unique needs of its people and its constant lodestar: “always following the road of developing human rights with Chinese characteristics.” “This is a road that takes the people as the center,” China explains, and “the road of human rights development always takes the well-being and interests of the people as the starting point and end result.”

But haven’t we been down this road before? Advocates for some of China’s most stigmatized communities certainly think so. These advocates have highlighted that these communities are far from the “center” and their “well-being and interests” are rarely considered. Since the UPR process began for all UN Member States in 2008—and arguably in most of China’s UN human rights interactions—certain vulnerable populations have been rendered effectively invisible. Of course, China’s most recent UPR statement proclaims that “it upholds the principle of the people’s primacy” while “promoting the comprehensive development and common prosperity of the people as a whole.” But who exactly is included in China’s definition of “the people”? And who gets left behind on China’s chosen “road” to human rights accountability?

A crackdown on some of China’s sex workers. Photo courtesy of Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

One group to pay particular attention to is China’s sex workers. Communities of sex workers and people who use drugs inhabit every corner of the world. In China, they are men and women, young and old, of all ethnicities, and of all sexual orientations and gender identities, living in rural and urban areas in every province, city, and village of the country. And they are among the most vulnerable in Chinese society as result of profound social stigma. In China, these communities face all manner of discrimination, including enormous barriers blocking equal access to health and employment, as well as violent physical and emotional abuse—not only from state law enforcement actors, but often from within their own families. These are precisely the kinds of marginalized populations who need their government to intervene and protect their fundamental rights, and yet they are often among the first to be left behind on China’s “road” toward “human rights with Chinese characteristics.”

A close look at China’s UPR statement makes clear how stigmatized communities like these sex workers have been at best forgotten and at worst purposefully excluded from government human rights efforts. This is especially apparent in China’s continued use of various forms of arbitrary detention. Since China’s second UPR cycle in 2013, China has rightly been praised by the international community for taking steps to eliminate one of the most long-lasting and widely condemned systems of arbitrary detention—the Reeducation Through Labor (“RTL”) system; in fact, China consistently showcases its efforts at abolishing RTL in its UPR statements. Yet, in eliminating the RTL system, China unfortunately has not committed itself to eliminating other forms of administrative detention that look and feel remarkably similar to RTL but specifically target stigmatized and marginalized groups. In the UPR report it prepared for Tuesday’s session, China affirms that it “continues to improve the conditions of custody and supervision to ensure that the personal security of detainees and prisoners is not violated.” However, for sex workers and people who use drugs who are held in China’s administrative detention systems, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Drug offenders exercise at a detention center in Shenyang in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. Photo courtesy of China OUT/AFP/Getty Images

The persistent arbitrary detention of sex workers and people who use drugs in China’s Custody and Education (“C&E”) [收容教育] and Compulsory Isolated Treatment (“CIT”) [强制隔离戒毒], administrative detention systems that have flourished even with RTL’s demise, are compelling examples of the invisibility of stigmatized populations in China’s UPR review; in fact nowhere in China’s 2018 UPR statement is there a focus on the rights of these groups. Sex workers and people who use drugs can be detained in C&E centers and under the CIT system respectively without judicial oversight or due process and without recourse to detainee protections otherwise guaranteed under Chinese law, all stemming from regulations that are overly broad in scope with vague definitions subject to politicized application.

 

Administrative detention under the C&E and CIT systems bear remarkable similarities to the system of RTL that China proudly announced to have abolished in 2013. In all these systems, individuals are exposed to risks of torture and other ill treatment—with documented detainee reports of inadequate healthcare, non-consensual medical testing, forced labor, and physical and mental abuse. Among many other troubling features, C&E centers subject detainees to long hours of forced, uncompensated labor, as well as compulsory and non-consensual physical examinations and medical testing. While in CIT, detainees rarely receive adequate healthcare or treatment and are subjected to forced labor and physical violence perpetrated by supervising employees. Additionally, while being weaned off drugs, CIT detainees are also subject to strenuous physical activity, denied critical medication or pain relief, and rarely offered counseling. Of course, ongoing systems of arbitrary detention are not limited to C&E and CIT. The detention camps in Xinjiang that subject Muslims to political indoctrination and substantial rights abuses bear the hallmarks of arbitrary detention in the context of China’s administrative detention framework. While RTL has been officially abolished, these systems persist, largely because of the invisibility of the populations who are detained within them – sex workers, people who use drug, China’s Muslims. On China’s “road of developing human rights with Chinese characteristics”—“a road that takes the people as the center”—it appears that certain populations just aren’t valued enough to be considered “people.”

Leitner team – (from L to R) – Joey Lee, Caitlin Hickey, Reece Pelley & Elisabeth Wickeri in Geneva last month.

Fortunately, despite this sense of déjà vu embarking on China’s well-worn path of UN human rights engagement, China’s upcoming third UPR offers the possibility for something different. The UPR is a mechanism through which each and every country undergoes a human rights review based on recommendations offered by UN Member States. China’s widely publicized and praised commitment during its second UPR in 2013 to abolish RTL came alongside a number of clear and direct recommendations from several UN Member States to do just that—eliminate RTL detention and commit to reforming China’s administrative detention system. These governments included France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As the UN Member States gear up for China’s latest UPR on November 6, they must insist that China honor its commitment to “the people”—meaning all people, including stigmatized and vulnerable communities at the margins of Chinese society, including sex workers and people who use drugs in C&E and CIT detention. Perhaps for these groups, China’s third time at the UPR will be the charm, and the international community can bear witness to their lives, which have for so long been invisible in China’s human rights engagement at the UN.

*Joey Lee and Elisabeth Wickeri are lawyers with the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School; Caitlin Hickey and Reece Pelley are law student advocates. The Leitner Center works to strengthen rule of law and human rights protections for vulnerable populations worldwide. In particular, in cooperation with in-country partners, the Leitner Center works extensively with civil society organizations to support and empower vulnerable populations in the People’s Republic of China (“China”). Drawing upon the expertise and documentation of China-based partners as the basis for analysis and recommendations, the Leitner Center submitted a Stakeholder Submission in advance of China’s upcoming UPR, and participated in advocacy in the lead-up to its November 6 review.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, October 21, 2018

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s (“CECC”) 2018 Annual Report (“the Report”), released on October 10, 2018, comes at a crucial point in world affairs.  The United States is on the retreat from the global stage, withdrawing from key international agreements and organizations, and China appears intent to replace it.  But as the CECC’s 2018 Annual Report makes clear, with President Xi Jinping’s complete consolidation of power this year and the re-entrenchment of the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP” or “the Party”) within the state, China’s rise will likely alter the current world order and challenge U.S. values and interests.  If anything, China’s recent behavior – the public disappearance of Meng Hongwei, the former Interpol chief and the issuance of more discriminatory regulations directed at Uighurs –  only substantiates CECC’s predictions that China’s rise will not be inline with the values that have dominated the world order since the end of World War II.

Former Interpol Chief, Meng Hongwei, now in NSC confinement.

The CECC was created in 2000 to monitor China’s human rights commitments, review its progress in developing a rule of law, and maintain a database of Chinese political prisoners.  With a staff of China experts, the CECC has become a leading voice on China’s progress in regards to international human rights standards and the development of rule of law in more sensitive areas such as freedom of expression, criminal justice and access to justice.  As with its previous reports, the 2018 Annual Report is extremely well researched and extensively documented, providing an important snapshot to what is really happening in China, making it an essential read.

While prior annual reports highlighted China’s progress in trying to meet international human rights standards or deepen its commitment to rule of law, the 2018 Annual Report is devoid of any positive developments.  And rightfully so.  As the Report makes clear, three alarming developments in the past year reflect a country intent on disregarding international human rights norms and turning its back to a rule of law.

A police state in the Uighur province of Xinjiang in China’s far West. (Photo courtesy of The Week (UK)).

Perhaps the Report’s most urgent issue is the Chinese government’s mass detention of what is estimated to be 1 million Uighurs in internment camps. Without any trial or criminal charges, these internment camps reflect the Chinese government’s stated goal to “sinicize” religion, including that of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority population in Xinjiang province.  And the mass detentions show no signs of stopping. As the CECC documents, the Chinese government’s own procurement data shows its plan to build more camps.

A second worrying development is the re-entrenchment of the Party within the State.  During much of Chairman Mao’s time, the Party and the State were essentially one, but since then, the Chinese government has sought to separate the Party from the government bureaucracy.  Until now.  In March 2018, the Party Central Committee issued a restructuring plan to again embed the Party in government work, with the Party taking a leadership role.  Perhaps the most notable example of the infiltration of the Party into everyday life is the creation of the National Supervisory Commission (“NSC”), an anti-corruption commission that has the power to “confine” – in other words, extra-judicially detain – any Party member or state employee suspected of corruption for three months without access to an attorney.  Employees of state-owned enterprises, staff of public hospitals and public educators all fall under the NSC’s purview. Even non-Party members and non-state employees could be subject to “confinement” by the NSC if they too are suspected of involvement in official misconduct.  Outside of the judiciary, the NSC is anything but due process.

China’s ubiquitous security cameras. (Photo Courtesy of the Huffington Post).

Finally, the 2018 Annual Report highlights the Chinese government’s continued use of technology as a tool of repression. The Chinese government is seeking to create a biometric database as well as a “social credit system” which, if realized, could have lasting effects on certain individuals.

The 2018 Annual Report concludes by offering some key recommendations, notably addressing abuses in Xinjiang publicly – and with key allies – before the United Nations, raising the issue of human rights in all bilateral relations, not just during the Department of State’s human rights dialogues with China, and condition law enforcement cooperation, such as cooperation on extradition, on a signed agreement from the Chinese government that it will respect due process in all situations.  But one wonders if these recommendations fall on deaf ears.  The CECC is supposed to be a joint commission between Congress and the Executive.  But as reflected in the masthead for this year’s Report, the Executive positions on the CECC remain empty.  While the Trump Administration is not shy in lambasting China on a variety of issues, and in early September word was leaked that it was considering economic sanctions against China for its internment of Uighurs, the fact that key Executive positions on the CECC remain empty over a year and a half into the Trump Administration, belies any meaningful commitment by the Administration to human rights and rule of law in China.  An unfortunate development given the severe situation documented in the CECC’s 2018 Annual Report and the danger it poses to the United States and the post-World War II world order.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, September 9, 2018

***Correction – After this post was published, a reader with experience on Chinese visa issues informed China Law & Policy that it isn’t always that a news outlet cannot establish a permanent office because of economic costs or means, but also because the Chinese government will not allow certain news outlets to establish a permanent office, thus preventing those reporters the ability to obtain the J-1 visa.  We have corrected the post to reflect this important difference and thank the person who informed us.  EML, Sept. 10, 2018***

Buzzfeed’s Former Beijing Bureau Chief, Megha Rajagopalan

Every three years, the Chinese government has effectively expelled a foreign journalist from China.  It started with Melissa Chan, an American journalist working for Al Jazeera, in 2012.  In 2015, it was Ursula Gauthier, a French journalist for L’Obs.  And last month it was Megha Rajagopalan, the Beijing Bureau chief of the online news magazine Buzzfeed.

With each expulsion of a foreign journalist comes speculation as to why.  Why did the Chinese authorities fail to renew a visa or cancel a press card.  The Chinese government hardly ever explains its reasons, citing that such failure to renew a visa was “in accordance with law.”  But no law or regulation is ever cited, let alone a specific provision.  As a result, most outside of China view the Chinese government’s decision having more to do with the reporter’s coverage of China than with any violated regulation.  With Gauthier, the Chinese government was more explicit about its decision to cancel her press card, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) criticizing Gauthier by name because of her scathing editorial on the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China.

Here, there can be little doubt that it was Rajagopalan’s reporting that resulted in her effective expulsion from China.  Under the law, MOFA clearly could have renewed Rajagopalan’s short-term journalist visa.  For some reason, it chose not to

Rajagopalan’s Reporting on Xinjiang – Why Is the Chinese Government So Sensitive About This?

Like Gauthier, Rajagopalan had done some hard-hitting reporting on the Uighers in Xinjiang, with an October 2017 article exposing the Chinese government’s increased surveillance and its mass detention of Uighurs for no other reason than being Uighur. Reporting from Xinjiang, Rajagopalan’s article was one of the first to uncover the Chinese government’s frightening oppression of Uighurs.  It also won her the Human Rights Press Awards’ Best Features Article (English) for that year.  In July 2018, Rajagopalan followed up her ground-breaking piece with another explosive article that brought to light the Chinese government’s pressure tactics on Uighurs abroad, including threats to send their Xinjiang-based family to internment camps if they do not spy on other Uighurs.

Xinjiang has long been a sensitive area for the Chinese government, fearing that the Muslim Uighurs could launch a successful separatist movement.  As a result, for over a decade, the Chinese government has instituted a national policy to “Go West,” encouraging ethnically Han Chinese to move to Xinjiang to develop this resource-rich area.  With the Go West policy, Xinjiang’s population has changed dramatically, with a current Han population of 40%, compared to 6% in 1949.  And with the increase in the Han population has come a decrease in the Uighur’s political clout and self-governance since Chinese Communist Party membership usually means giving up religion.  Few of the ethnically Muslim Uighurs are atheists and hence, unable to join the Party, and thus unable to effect change in their own region.  For example, when, in 2009, the Chinese government decided to destroy much of the the old city of Kashgar, a city that stood for centuries and was perhaps the most Uighur area of all of Xinjiang, the Uighurs were unable to stop it.  Needless to say, such loss of power over their own destinies and the attempted destruction of their own cultural identity has not produced a population satisfied with Chinese rule.

Some of the routes on China’s One Belt, One Road

And Xinjiang’s importance to the Chinese government has only increased in recent years as Xinjiang is central to the success of China’s “One Belt, One Road” policy.  Launched in 2013, One Belt, One Road is China’s very serious and well-funded attempt to exert economic influence globally. Xinjiang is the key land route to Central Asia and Europe, making it even more crucial that the Chinese government subdues the Uighur population.  To do so, in 2015, the Chinese government passed two national laws that had an disparate, negative effect on the Uighurs of Xinjiang: the broadly-worded National Security Law, that equated religious “extremism” with terrorism, and the Counter-Terrorism Law, which gave security forces significant powers to prohibit “extremism.”   Xinjiang was the first province to issue local regulations to carry out the precepts of the Counter-Terrorism law, including mandating governmental “aid and education” for those individuals who, while not convicted of any crimes, were induced into participating in terrorism or extremism, seemingly laying the groundwork for the mass detentions currently occurring. (See Xinjiang Implementing Regs of the Counter-Terrorism Law,  Art. 38)  And Rajagopalan’s article was one of the first to show that Uighurs were in fact being massively surveilled and detained in re-education internment camps without ever being tried – let alone convicted – of any crime.  Instead it was the simple practice of their religion that the government viewed as “extremism.”

Since Rajagopalan’s October 2017 article, both by the United States Department of State and the United Nations estimate that close to a million Uighurs have been sent to these internment camps without any trial, all for the purpose of stamping out the Uighur identity.  And there appears to be no end in sight with satellite images showing the rapid building of what looks like even more internment camps.

Chinese police officer stands guard outside a mosque in Xinjiang.

As more and more information began to emerge in the international media about the depth of the Chinese government’s whole-scale human rights violations against Uighurs, and as foreign governments and international bodies began to take notice and advocate sanctions against China, Rajagopalan’s visa was almost up and the Chinese government was in the midst of determining whether to renew it.  In May 2018, MOFA, the oversight agency of foreign journalists, informed Buzzfeed Rajagopalan’s journalist visa would not be renewed, forcing Rajagopalan to leave China as soon as it expired.

When questioned at an August 23, 2018 press conference, MOFA spokesperson Lu Wei stated that Rajagopalan’s visa issue was handled “in accordance with law and regulation” and, in his remarks, made a distinction, without explaining the significance, between Rajagopalan’s visa – a short-term journalist visa, known as a J-2 visa – and a resident foreign reporter’s visa, known as a J-1 visa.

Are J-2 Visa’s Non-Renewable Under Chinese Law?

Unlike the United States, where there is only one type of journalist visa, Chinese law distinguishes between two types of journalist visas, the J-1 and the J-2.  The J-1 visa can only be issued to journalists whose news agency has a permanent office in China (See Regulations on the Exit-Entry of Foreign Administration of Foreign Nationals (“Exit-Entry Regulations”), Article 6(5)).  Because of the “permanent office” requirement, J-1 visas are increasingly issued to only more traditional outlets; think the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, etc.  J-1 visas also confers residency status, and J-1 visa holders must also apply for a Press Card from MOFA within 7 business days of their arrival in China. (See Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on News Coverage by Permanent Offices of Foreign Media Organizations and Foreign Journalists (“Foreign Media Regulations”), Article 10).

J-2 visas are issued to journalists who come to China for short-term reporting and there is no permanent office requirement. (Exit-Entry Regulations, Article 6(5).)  Traditionally, those are journalists coming to do a one-off story; for example, when a New York Newsday reporter travels to cover the U.S. President’s visit to China, or the Des Moines Register sends a reporter to cover the pork market in China.  J-2 visas are limited to six months (Foreign Media Regulations, Article 2) and J-2 journalists do not obtain a Press Card.

MOFA spokesperson Lu Wei

But increasingly, news agencies are seeking to send long-term reporters to China without establishing a permanent office.  This is especially true of online outlets like the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, who, according to a source with knowledge of China’s visa issues, the Chinese government will not permit to set up a permanent offices.  or any agency that just doesn’t have the deep pockets of a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times.  But because they do not have a permanent office, Thus, their China-based reporters cannot obtain a J-1 visa.  Instead, the Chinese government has been providing these reporters with a J-2 visa with the understanding that the visa will be renewed when the initial term is over.  According to the New York Times, this was the deal that Buzzfeed worked out with the Chinese government prior to Rajagopalan’s arrival –a six month J-2 visa renewable upon its expiration. But when Rajagopalan’s six months were up, MOFA failed to renew her J-2 visa.

MOFA’s response to the question about the failure to renew Rajagopalan’s visa – that she was not a resident foreign reporter – seems to imply that the law does not permit the renewal of J-2 visas.  But this is not true.  Article 29 of China’s Exit-Entry Administration Law clearly contemplates the renewal of any short-term visa.  Article 29 lays out the procedures by which the holder can apply for an extension and the only limitation being that the renewed visa cannot be for a longer length of time than the original visa.

Al Jazeera journalist, Melissa Chan, back when she could report from China

In fact, MOFA has renewed J-2 visas in similar situations.  For two years, Matt Sheehan was the Huffington Post’s China-based reporter, meaning that his J-2, short-term visa must have been renewed every six months.  Similarly, Melissa Chan had three J-2 visas, repeatedly renewed until the Chinese government refused to renew her visa for a fourth time.

MOFA had the authority to renew Rajagopalan’s J-2 visa, it just decided not to.  And Rajagopalan’s reporting on Xinjiang was the catalyst that has led to the current international attention to Xinjiang, including the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s public rebuke of the Chinese government’s practices in Xinjiang.  In July, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a powerful hearing condemning China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang and calling for the use of the Magnitsky Act against officials involved with Xinjiang.

Going to market in the police state of Xinjiang

Every day there are more and more articles exposing the internment of millions and the efforts to eliminate the Uighur culture.  The international heat is on about the Chinese government’s human rights violations in Xinjiang.  And the Chinese government’s failure to renew Rajagopalan’s visa was not just retribution against her.  Likely it was intended as a teaching lesson to other journalists – report on this and we might fail to renew your visa too.  Fortunately, no one has taken the cue and powerful reporting continues.  What will be the test comes this December, when all resident foreign reporters go through the annual rite of renewing their press cards and J-1 visas.  On some level, Rajagopalan, with her short-term J-2 visa, was low-hanging fruit.  Will the Chinese government conveniently lose paper work of resident foreign journalists, forcing them to leave the country while they wait for their paperwork to be found?  Or will press cards be canceled?  Or even more terrifyingly, will the Chinese government completely close off all access to Xinjiang?

Make no mistake, Rajagopalan was only the start.  Xinjiang – and the Chinese government’s desire to eradicate a strong Uighur identity – is too important for the Chinese government not to ratchet up its game.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, July 9, 2018

When Zhuang Liehong arrived in America he anticipated a country that would open its arms to him and celebrate his arrival.  Only years before – in 2011 – Zhuang, then 28 years old, had been the darling of many a Western newspaper as he led the mass protests in his village of Wukan.  It was Zhuang who started the Wukan revolt, waking up fellow villagers to the illegal appropriation of local land with little to no compensation.  And it was these protests that would necessitate Zhuang’s exodus from China to the United States.

But as Lauren Hilgers portrays in her powerful, thought-provoking new book, Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown, America was anything but welcoming.  Instead, Zhuang, and his wife Little Yan, find themselves friendless, jobless and directionless in New York; their infant son left in Wukan with Zhuang’s parents.  The few contacts Zhuang has in New York don’t have the advice he needs to survive as an undocumented immigrant in Flushing, Queens.  As Hilgers recounts, Zhuang came to America believing that applying for asylum could easily be done with a simple application and some newspaper clips about his advocacy.  But Zhuang quickly learns that America’s immigration system is a bureaucratic nightmare; that this proud man whose name once was splashed on the pages of the New York Times, is nothing more than a number in America’s soul crushing asylum process.  It is Hilgers’ deft writing and keen observations that allow the reader to feel with Zhuang.  Yes, at times, he is arrogant, thinking that because of who he is, he will go to the front of the line.  But at the same time, the reader feels the disappointment that Zhuang must have felt when reality set in.

Hilgers goes back and forth between Zhuang’s old life in China – recounting the injustices that the Wukan villagers suffered as a result of their standing up to the government – and his new life in Flushing, effectively interweaving the two stories into one narrative.  But it is the second part of this narrative – the immigrant life – that currently resonates the most given the Trump Administration’s zero tolerance policy toward migrants fleeing violence in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.

The size of the crowds of the 2011 Wukan Protests Photo courtesy of the BBC

Hilgers doesn’t shy away from the fact that for Chinese immigrants, it is in many ways easier to obtain asylum than those currently coming from Central America.  U.S. immigration policy makes a distinction between state-sponsored violence and violence perpetrated by private actors, preferring the former.  For the Chinese, showing state-sponsored violence – the one child policy, discrimination against Christians, assault of human rights activists – is pretty easy in a one-party, Communist dictatorship.  In fact, as Hilgers documents, an asylum industry of sorts has emerged in Flushing: churches willing to give out attendance certificates to its members; Chinese immigrants who, unlike Zhuang, have never thought about democracy attend the weekly protests of the Chinese Democracy Party; and asylum lawyers that abound in Flushing, willing to tell their clients the “tricks” to get asylum, even after a 2012 raid by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Zhuang Liehong in New York City. Still Protesting. Photo courtesy of Lianian Films. http://www.lianainfilms.com/

But for the families coming from Central America, trying to obtain asylum is not as easy since the violence they are fleeing is perpetrated by criminal gangs, in other words, private actors. Even though these countries have weak governments, where crime is rarely prosecuted, that is not enough to show state-sponsored violence.  And in addition to Trump’s current zero tolerance policy, a policy that initially ripped children from their parents, and Jeff Sessions’ rescission of domestic violence and gang violence as a basis for asylum, Trump has also revoked the temporary protected status designation for El Salvadorian immigrants, a status that allows undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States.  By September 2019, 350,000 immigrants will be deported backed to El Salvador, one of the world’s most violent nations.  Somehow, under U.S. immigration policy, unspeakable acts of violence on little Latino children isn’t a grave enough atrocity. Hilgers doesn’t discuss this issue in her current book, but it is something that many readers might be thinking about given Zhuang struggles and the current struggles of the migrants desperately trying to find a safe place for their children. And, as Hilgers recounts in her analysis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, even with a complete ban, Chinese immigrants found a way to get into the United States.  As long as circumstances in the home country remain dire, people will continue to flee to a better place.  And that place has long been America.

Through Zhuang’s story and many of the other engaging characters Hilgers writes about – Little Yan, Karen, Tang Yuanjun – we get to see the insular, and lonely world, that is immigrant life in Flushing.  At times it is heartbreakingly sad and at times, down right funny.  But through it all, Hilgers brilliance as a writer shines through; every character she writes about, she completely humanizes.  These are not immigrants from a foreign country with a different culture; these are human beings that, like each of us, suffer life’s disappointments and, like each of us, find joy in life’s small accomplishments.  Given the times, it is important to be reminded of that and Patriot Number One is a must read.

Rating:

Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown, by Lauren Hilgers (Crown New York, 2018), 324 pages

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, June 3, 2018

The Protests on Tiananmen Square, Spring 1989

Twenty-nine years ago today, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government ordered the unprovoked and brutal assault by the People’s Liberation Army on tens of thousands of unarmed civilians surrounding Tiananmen Square.  The exact number of people killed the night of June 3, 1989 into the early morning hours of June 4 is only known to the perpetrators of the massacre: the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”). But whether it was a few hundred or a few thousand does not diminish the fact that peaceful protests were squashed with such a violent – and unnecessary – crackdown.

In the immediate aftermath, other countries had to figure out how to respond to a government that would massacre its own people.  In the United States, that response came from President George H.W. Bush who granted asylum to Chinese dissidents and ordered a plethora of sanctions against China, including suspension of U.S. foreign aid, arm sales, high-level government exchanges, export licenses for certain products and the linking of Most Favored Nation status to human rights. (see Congressional Research Services, China: Economic Sanctions (Aug. 22, 2016), pp. 1-3)  In the months that followed, Congress codified many of those sanctions including the suspension of export licenses for crime control and detection equipment. (see Public Law (“P.L.”) 101-246, § 902(a)(4))  Congress’ reasons for codifying these sanctions: the random arrest and detention of those suspected of participating in the Tiananmen Square protests (P.L. 101-246, § 901(a)(3)-(4)), continued surveillance on activists (P.L. 101-246, § 901(a)(5)), blocking foreign journalists from covering the events (P.L. 101-246, § 901(a)(7)), and continued and unlawful repression of human rights activists and activities (P.L. 101-246, § 901(a)(8)).

But as time progressed and the events of June 4, 1989 became a distant memory, many of the U.S.’ Tiananmen Square sanctions were waived or rendered obsolete. (China: Economic Sanctions, p. 3)  But one sanction that still remains in effect today is the suspension of export licenses to any U.S. company seeking to sell any equipment or instruments related to crime control and detection. (Id., pp. 3, 8; see also Office of the Chief Counsel, Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Dep’t of Commerce, Legal Authority: Export Administration Regulations (Jan. 4, 2017) (“BIS Legal Authority”), Part III.7 (p. 106)).  Although the President can terminate the sanctions, he can only do so if he issues a report to Congress that provides one of two reasons – either that the Chinese government no longer perpetuates human rights violations or it is in the best interest of the United States to terminate the sanctions.  It does not appear that a U.S. president has ever issued such a report in regards to crime control sales, leaving the Tiananmen Square sanctions against of such equipment by U.S. companies to China very much in effect.

Chinese police with facial recognition sunglasses

As China uses technology more and more to suppress any form of spontaneous dissent and to constantly surveil its citizenry, the Tiananmen Square sanctions against the sale of crime control equipment to China seem particularly prescient.  But, unfortunately, the sanctions have rarely been enforced and U.S. companies skirt the sanctions with impunity.  In 2011, Cisco sold over 500,000 cameras to the city of Chongqing specifically to watch its citizens. Every year, U.S. technology and security companies enthusiastically market their goods at the China International Exhibition on Police Equipment, an annual trade show sponsored by the Ministry of Public Security.

And now it turns out that U.S. companies are actively participating in what can only be termed the most profound police state in human history: the mass surveillance, detention and abuse of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group in China’s western province of Xinjiang.  Cameras on every street are equipped with facial recognition; Uighurs are constantly stopped by police to check their social media accounts on their phones; over 500,000 Uighurs have been forced into detention without any trial, under the guise of “Political Education Centers;” iris scans and blood tests, in order to collect DNA, are randomly performed on Uighurs; the Han Chinese in Xinjiang are exempt from these abuses.

Unfortunately, U.S. company Thermo Fisher Scientific is one of the entities selling DNA technology to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and various Public Security bureaus across China, including those in Xinjiang, according to a Human Rights Watch report.  Last month, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (“CECC”) issued a letter to Wilbur Ross, the Secretary of Commerce, calling on him to investigate Thermo Fisher’s sales to China’s public security organs in light of the export sanctions and to report what other export licenses are being granted in violation of the law.  It does not appear that Secretary Ross has responded to the CECC’s inquiry, and if the history of the enforcement of the Tiananmen Square sanctions is any guide, he will not.

Chinese police in Xinjiang city of Kashgar

Many of the reasons for the passage of the Tiananmen Square sanctions almost 29 years ago – the repression of dissent, surveillance of peaceful protesters, the concealment of information, the violation of human rights – are very much alive and well in today’s China.  It is true that given China’s current status in the world, it will be much harder now to influence China’s domestic behavior than it was in 1989.  But that doesn’t mean that the United States should abandon its own laws, or the policies underlying those laws.  The government should not permit U.S companies to profit from the Chinese government’s creation of a Jim Crow society in Xinjiang.   To do so would be a disrespect to the many innocent lives lost 29 years ago today and to the valiant efforts of the U.S. government in the wake of the massacre to ensure that the U.S. does not play a role in human rights violations in China.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, March 29, 2018

The Toyokan Gallery at the Tokyo National Museum

On a rainy Tuesday in Tokyo, I found myself with a lot of time to kill at the Tokyo National Museum and as a result, ended up meandering into its Toyokan Gallery. A small, compact gallery, it houses some phenomenal art and artifacts from ancient China.  While the Museum’s “Highlights of Japanese Art” is what draws in most tourist, a stop at the Toyokan Gallery is equally a must.

Camel on the Silk Road

At the turn of the 20^th century, while Qing Dynasty China was in a state of disarray, much of Western China became part of an international, archeologist race for who could uncover the ancient Buddhist capitals of the Silk Road.  With those discoveries also came a wealth of riches, namely the ability for those archeologists to take some of China’s most impressive artifacts back to their home countries.  Although the British, with Aurel Stein, and the French, with Paul Pelliot, obtained some of the most well-known artifacts from Western China, the Japanese were in on the game, sending a mysterious figure, Count Otani Kozui to these far reaches of China.

A map of Count Otani’s 3 tours to Western China, presented at the Tokyo National Museum

It is his discoveries – and many other Japanese archeologists and collectors who soon followed in his path – that make the Toyokan Gallery an impressive collection.  While the Museum does not exhibit any of the original work that Count Otani obtained during his three exhibitions to the celebrated, ancient Silk Road city of Dunhuang, the Museum does lay out other artifacts that show the beauty of Chinese art from the the eighth century, as well as the early sinicization of Buddhist sculpture.  In addition to pieces from far Western China, the Toyokan also has a number of splendid Buddhist wall sculptures, also from the 700s and lifted from a Buddhist site from the then capital of China, Chang’an (present day Xi’an).  The Museum does not explain how or why it has these niche carvings, but the collection is something to be seen.

A sublime example of Gandhara Buddhist artwork

But what makes the Toyokan Gallery truly superb is it large collection of Buddhist art from Gandhara, a kingdom which existed between 1200 BC and 500 AD and was conquered by Alexander the Great in 327 BC.  Gandhara was located in what is now present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.  As a result of its history and geography, Gandharan art, with its crossroads of the Western world and the Eastern civilizations, shows the confluence of both.  It was also one of the first civilizations outside of India where Buddhism took hold on its way to China, Korea and eventually Japan.   But shockingly for most, its statutes of Buddha are not at all Asian.  Instead, the sculpture has traces of Greek and Roman influences – Buddha with western facial features, with curly hair. The Museum has some key pieces that truly highlight the beauty that is Gandharan Buddhist art and leaves the spectator in awe.  It would be a travesty to go to the Tokyo National Museum and miss this remarkable collection.

Gandhara Art!

The remaining floors also have other pieces of interest to Chinese art aficionados. Ceramics, lacquerware, and a rather impressive collection, largely from private donations, of Chinese scroll paintings and calligraphy.

Given its size, adding the Toyokan Gallery will probably only add an extra hour to your visit to the Tokyo National Museum.  But in that hour, you see some of the finest examples of Gandharan and western Chinese Buddhist art.  Expect your mind to be blown.  And it would be crazy to miss that.

Rating:
Toyokan Gallery (the Asian Art Gallery)
Permanent Exhibit
Tokyo National Museum
13-9 Uenokoen, Taitō, Tokyo 110-8712
Sundays through Saturday, 9:30 AM to 5 PM; Open later Friday, Saturdays & Sundays
For more information on hours and how to get there, visit: http://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_free_page/index.php?id=113
Cost = 620 Yen

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, March 4, 2018

Since 2004, it has been illegal to build golf courses in China.  Not only do they suck up a tremendous amount of water, but all too often local officials unlawfully appropriate farmers’ land for these golf courses.  In 2015, President Xi Jinping focused his anti-corruption campaign on the sport, forbidding Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials from playing the game.  But even with these prohibitions, golf still reins.  Since 2004, over 400 new golf courses have been illegally built.

Thus, one would think that the Chinese government would welcome a local tip that an official was appropriating village land to sell to a developer to build a golf course.  But that is not how the Chinese government responded when, in August 2015, Guangdong attorney Liu Yao reported precisely that.  Instead, Liu Yao now sits in a jail cell, serving a 20 year sentence on what most believe are trumped-up charges in retaliation for his whistle-blowing.

Like many Chinese human rights lawyers, Liu Yao is not a stranger to the inside of a Chinese prison.  In 2008, Liu was given a four year sentence for leading a demonstration of farmers who had not been properly compensated when government officials took their land. His sentence was decreased to 18 months after the Shenzhen Lawyers Association began a campaign to expose the sham that was his conviction.

But as in every society, land has value and the powerful will seek to unlawfully strip the poor of their land rights, enriching themselves in the process. For China, that struggle is happening in the rural villages. And that is what makes Liu, an effective advocate for these rural poor, a danger to the powerful.

Liu Yao awaiting his verdict

But Liu is more than just an advocate.  He is one also of them, deepening his clients’ faith and trust in him.  As Tom Mitchell reported back in 2009, Liu himself is the son of farmers, teaching himself the law after witnessing injustices against his family and feeling powerless to do anything about it.  He knows the value of land to farmers and since passing the bar exam in 2003, has successfully helped farmers in his home province of Guangdong to fight to keep their land or, at the very least, for the market value of what they are forced to give up.

So when He Zhongyou, the Party Secretary of Heyuan City in rural Guangdong, appropriated thousands of farming fields to sell to a company to build an “ecotourist site”, Liu, whose 2008 conviction resulted in his disbarment, did what he could: he filed a complaint about He Zhongyou to the CCP’s Commission for Discipline Inspection in Guangdong.  Make no mistake, He Zhongyou’s ecotourism development was not a secret to the central government; the local state-run media had already celebrated He Zhongyou’s development.  But what Liu highlighted was the fact that the ecotourist site was to also include an illegal golf course, something not reported by the press.  And Liu did not just submit the complaint.  A few days later, on August 22, 2015, he also published it on his blog for all to read.

On December 26, 2015, while meeting with a colleague, Liu Yao was grabbed by a number of men, thrown into an unmarked minivan and taken away according to an article that appeared in the Southern Metropolis Daily.

For over six months, Liu was held incommunicado, under the now infamous and well-abused legal procedure of “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL).  Under Article 73 of the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), RSDL is permitted when the individual is being investigated for national security crimes; national security also permits the police to deny access to lawyers and family members (CPL, Art. 37; see also RSDL Monitor for more on the abuse of RSDL on human rights defenders).  The “evidence” the police used to claim that it was investigating Liu Yao for national security crimes, was a picture of Liu with two well-known Western China law experts, Professors Jerome Cohen and Eva Pils.  Because of that picture, the police claimed that they were investigating Liu for “providing state secrets to foreigners.”

Liu Yao and his wife, Lai Wei’E

Ultimately, the police’s national security investigation went nowhere except for the very useful fact that it provided a fig leaf of legality to deny Liu access to his own lawyer.  On June 23, 2016, Liu was officially charged with extortion (Art. 274 of the Criminal Law (CL)), fraud (CL, Art.192,) , and trafficking in children (CL, Art. 240).  The extortion and fraud claims related to Liu’s work in achieving beneficial settlements from some of the local industries for their illegal appropriation of his clients’ land.  The trafficking charge was a result of his and his wife’s adoption of a baby from an unwed mother who already had three other children.  But in addition to Liu, four local farmers were also charged as well as Liu’s own son.  Liu’s wife, Lai Wei’E was also held for a year, allegedly while the police were investigating the legality of the adoption.

With a closed door trial, lack of access to a lawyer, and the fact that Liu was exposing the local government’s most important revenue-generating strategy – illegal land grabs – a judgment of guilty on all charges was all but certain.  And on April 24, 2017, the Heyuan City Intermediate People’s Court found Liu Yao guilty, sentencing him to 20 years and a fine of 1.4 million RMB ($221,000).  Liu’s son was given four years and three months for helping his father post materials online with the three farmers receiving sentences ranging from four years to nine and half years.

He Zhongyou

Even with the Chinese government crackdown on human rights lawyers that began in earnest in July 2015, Liu’s 20 year sentence is harsh.  It is almost triple that which was given to the “ringleaders” of China’s human rights lawyers.  Such a harsh sentence likely shows the continued importance to the Chinese government of being able to take farmers’ land without proper compensation.  Even representing Falun Gong participants, petitioners, other rights activists is not as threatening to the government as representing those who challenge an important revenue source to local officials.

And what happened to He Zhongyou after Liu Yao exposed his land grab to build a golf course?  He has had a series of promotions.  In January 2016, as Liu languished in detention, He Zhongyou became the vice-governor of Guangdong Province, an influential position in one of China’s wealthiest provinces.  In May 2017, after Liu Yao received his 20 year sentence, He Zhongyou was again promoted to the powerful position of Secretary of the CPP’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission for Guangdong.

From the website for the resort that shows the golf course

And the illegal golf course? It’s been built along with a resort of luxury RVs, personal saunas and a Disney-like castle to serve as the golf club.  For this playground of the wealthy, Liu Yao got 20 years, pretty much a life sentence for this 56-year-old.

Since taking over the leadership in 2012, Xi Jinping has attempted to reassure foreign powers that China’s rise is peaceful.  But all evidence points otherwise.  In the summer, it was the unnecessary death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo while he was serving an 11 year prison sentence; last week it was the mysterious death of human rights lawyer Li Baiguang after being admitted to a state-run hospital for stomach pains; a few days ago it was Xi’s moves to eliminate term limits; and then there is Liu Yao’s 20 year sentence for exposing the corruption and injustice that Xi’s government has publicly stated it wants to eradicate.  Increasingly, China’s rise – or more apt, Xi’s consolidation of power – has not been peaceful.  It is time foreign government recognize that what is happening to China’s human rights defenders is not an outlier but is instead a reflection of the governing philosophy of Xi’s regime, both domestically and internationally.  And it’s time they start to care and raise these issues publicly.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, February 25, 2018

President Xi Jinping, trying to be more Mao than Mao?

In preparation of the three-day plenum set to start on Monday, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the Party’s highest ranking body, announced today that it would propose the elimination of the term limit provision found in the Chinese Constitution.  While the proposal still has to be ratified by the National People’s Congress (NPC), which is set to convene on March 5, 2018, the Party-controlled NPC will likely rubberstamp the proposals that emerge from this week’s Party plenum.

Added to China’s 1982 Constitution, the term limit provision limits the president and vice-president to two, five-year terms.  It was put in place in response to the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and the one-man leadership of Mao Zedong, with its goal to ensure the peaceful transfer of power from one leader to another and eliminate the consolidation of power in one man.  But it’s repudiation all but guarantees that current President Xi Jinping will continue on as China’s leader well past 2023, when his second term was to end.  It also signifies that, with the rapid purging of rivals through his anti-corruption campaign, all power now resides with Xi.  Gone is China’s governing model of a collective Party approach, an approach where Xi would merely be the first among equals, an approach that has ruled China for the last 35 years.

The last time a U.S. President met a one-man-rule leader.

How will the United States confront this new challenge is anyone’s guess.  The United States, only formally recognizing the People’s Republic of China in 1979, has only engaged China with a collective leadership.  And as if on cue, last week, the Asia Society’s online magazine, ChinaFile, published a series of conversations from experts about how the U.S. should engage a rising China under Xi Jinping.  It’s a very timely piece and well worth the read, with many already acknowledging complete power in Xi.  And while Professor Jerome Cohen in his piece rightly points out that Xi will eventually pass from the scene and there will be a reaction to his harsh rule, much like there was when Mao died, expect that point to be much further away now that Xi will likely be able to rule indefinitely.

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By Elizabeth M. Lynch, December 25, 2017

UPDATE – Dec. 26 @ 10:00 AM, EST – As expected, Wu Gan was found guilty of subverting state power.  He was given one of the harshest sentences yet – 8 years (with about 2 and a half already served).  His release date is May 18, 2023.  Xie Yang escaped any prison time, with his court noting that he plead guilty to the charge of inciting subversion and his actions did not cause severe damage to national security.  Xie also again publicly withdrew his claims of torture while in custody.

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China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group announcement about the upcoming court appearances in Wu Gan’s (R) case and Xie Yang’s (L) case

As the sun sets on Christmas 2017, China will awake on Tuesday to two more civil rights activists being convicted for seeking to end injustice in their country.  According to lawyer Liang Xiaojun, the courts will finally issue verdicts – and possibly sentences – in the cases against advocate Wu Gan and lawyer Xie Yang, two civil rights activists arrested and charged in the wake of the Chinese government’s July 9, 2015 nationwide crackdown on over 250 civil rights lawyers and activists (“the 709 Crackdown”).  Although both had their trials months ago – Wu Gan on August 17, 2017 at a closed-door trial at the Tianjin Intermediate Court and Xie Yang on May 8, 2017 at the Changsha Intermediate Court – verdicts, and in the case of Xie Yang, a possible re-trial, will be announced tomorrow morning at each of the respective courts.  Wu’s verdict will be handed down at 8:30 AM local time and Xie’s court will deal with his case an hour later.

While both have undergone severe treatment in custody, with allegations of torture, expect a much harsher sentence for Wu Gan.  First, Wu Gan has been charged with the more severe crime of “subversion of state power,” a charge that, if he is determined to be a ringleader, carries a sentence of no less than 10 years under Article 105 of China’s Criminal Law.  If he is considered a mere participant, the law still requires a sentence of no less than five years.  Xie Yang has been charged with “inciting subversion of state power.”  It’s the verb of inciting that will inevitably lead to a lesser sentence under Article 105 of five years or less (unless of course he is considered a “ringleader; then five years minimum).  Further, since his trial, Xie Yang has been out on bail.  Although constantly surveilled  by police, it provides a touch more freedom than being trapped in a Chinese detention facility.

A female character who stabs to death a government official after he assumes she is a prostitute and tries to rape her in Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin.

Second, Wu Gan – who often uses the online pen name of Super Vulgar Butcher – is the activist that defies the Chinese government’s current narrative – a narrative that believes that middle class, intellectual lawyers have become entrapped by “foreign forces,” forces like George Soros and the U.S. government that funds Chinese civil rights non-profits.  But that is not Wu Gan.  Instead, for the first 35 years of his life, Wu Gan was just an average Chinese citizen.  A former soldier, Wu Gan was a security guard at the Xiamen Gaoji International Airport until he resigned in 2008 to work full-time on his online activism, wanting to expose the everyday injustices that frustrated him.  In 2009, Wu Gan brought societal attention to the case of Deng Yujiao, a waitress who stabbed to death a government official who attempted to rape her.  While her story would eventually appear in Jia Zhangke’s internationally-acclaimed film, A Touch of Sin, it was Wu Gan who brought the injustice of her case to light.  His activism around the case sparked an online debate about rampant government corruption, the flagrant abuse of prostitutes by government officials as well as the right of women to defend themselves.  It was also successful, resulting in Deng Yujiao being convicted of the much lesser crime of “causing injury with intent” as opposed to the original murder charge.

Photo of Wu Gan at his May 2015 protest outside the courthouse. Photo courtesy of Change China

Further, Wu Gan’s strategies just get under the skin more.  Wu’s advocacy includes using online humor, satire, crowdfunding and street performances to draw attention to the Chinese government’s abuse of people’s rights.  In 2011, Wu published a series of online “How To” pamphlets: Guide to Butchering Pigs (strategies on how to conduct a campaign to protect human rights); Guide to Drinking Tea (how to deal with the police during interrogations); and Guide to Petitioners Fighting Against Forced Demolitions (instruction manual on how individuals can fight to protect their home from force demolition).  Each are widely popular in China and not just for their fun titles but because they are effective teaching tools.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back was Wu Gan’s May 2015 street protest to overturn the death sentence of four criminal defendants who had been convicted of capital murder even though each was tortured while in custody.  Wu stood outside the courthouse with two handmade signs – one with a picture of the chief judge with a Hitler moustache and one with the tombstone of the chief judge with an engraving highlighting his lack of integrity and ignorance of justice.  Situated between the signs was Wu, with his middle fingers up on each hand.  While that kind of protest elicits chuckles in the West, in China it is not tolerated.  Wu Gan was detained and has been in custody since.  Regardless of the fact that the four criminal defendants were exonerated in 2016, Wu Gan will still likely see a prison sentence as a result of his advocacy for justice.

Xie Yang in happier times with his daughter. Xie’s wife and two daughters were able to flee China earlier this year and now are in the United States.

But make no mistake, lawyer Xie Yang’s detention has been no walk in the park.  While being held incommunicado, Xie was physically tortured according to his lawyers who eventually got access to him.  And like Wu Gan, Xie’s crime has been his advocacy on behalf of others.  Xie Yang has long represented China’s most vulnerable: Christians; members of China’s Democratic Party; petitioners whose land was unlawfully seized by the government; and other activists.  In May 2015, Xie had been retained by the family of Xu Chunhe after the police officer who killed him was found not guilty of any crime.  Although Xu Chunhe, unarmed, was with his three young children and his 81 year-old mother in a crowded train station, the officer still shot and killed Xu Chunhe.  According to the officer, his act was one of self-defense; but for for most Chinese people, Xu Chunhe’s case was yet another example of police acting with impunity.  Thus, Xie Yang’s advocacy in bringing a wrongful death case on behalf of the family would go to the heart of the Chinese government’s police state.  And for that, he is now facing the charge of inciting subversion of state power.

But while Wu Gan and Xie Yang’s cases will finally be dealt with tomorrow, there is still one activist that has disappeared completely, lawyer Wang Quanzhang.  Another victim of the 709 Crackdown, Wang has not been heard from since August 4, 2015, when he was detained for “inciting subversion of state power.”  Neither his wife, family, nor the lawyers hired by his family have been able to meet with him and no trial has been set for Wang even though it has been more than two years since he was first taken into custody.  While Wu Gan and Xie Yang’s fates will be known tomorrow, it is the unknown of what is happening to Wang Quanzhang – and why – that is most alarming.  Denied access to lawyers, unable to meet with family, no speedy trial, how is this a country with a rule of law?