[news] China's Legal Changes

[ianb@sun670.telecom.tandem.com (Ian Bui)]

ta<.ng kac bac ba?n tin lie^n quan dde^n' TQ.

(typos are mine)

ian

Dallas Morning News, March 7, 1997
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(from New York Times News Service)

BEIJING -- China's legislature unveiled a major revision of its 
criminal law Thursday, introducing new offenses including money
laundering and insider trading, and eliminating the overtly
political category of "counterrevolutionary" crimes.

	The changes, the first significant revision of the nation's
criminal code since 1979, reflect an effort by an authoritarian
state to grapple with the new kinds of crimes that are emerging 
as China becomes a more open society, as well as to handle old
crimes in a more professional way.

	Much as the reforms were presented as a step toward
establishing a rule of law in China, they are more like laying out
the skeleton of a modern legal system without providing any flesh.
While they reflect a desire by China's judicial officials to be
more competent, the new items are not expected to change the 
defining characteristics of Chinese courts: deciding cases based
on guidance from Communist Party officials rather than on legal
opinion.

	It is a coincidence that the legal reforms, which are 
expected to be approved by the National People's Congress next
week, were made just two weeks after the death of Deng Xiaoping.
Yet like Mr. Deng's death and the political transition it 
symbolizes, Thursday's legal reforms are a figurative step
toward greater professionalism without changing the essence of
a system that is still run in an old-fashioned way, by a small,
secretive and authoritarian group of Communist Party leaders.

	Most notable among Thursday's legal revisions was the
decision to abandon counterrevolutionary crimes as a legal
category. Counterrevolutionary crimes, widely used in the past
to prosecute political cases, have been criticized for years
by Chinese legal experts as a form that has no basis in modern
legal theory.

	Counterrevolutionary essentially meant something
considered a threat to China's leaders. It is a vague, catchall
term that even the authorities had to admit was imprecise and
outdated.

	"Revisions of the crimes of counterrevolution is made
out of the consideration that China has left the era of revolution,"
said Wang Hanbin, a vice chairman of the Congress Standing Committee.

	China is not abandoning the notion of political crimes.
Crimes previously considered counterrevolutionary are being
reclassified as offenses that endanger state security.

	Robin Munro, Hong Kong director of Asia Watch, which
monitors human rights abuses, said that the legal changes would
be significant if they came in a context of judicial tolerance
for those who voice differing political opinions. 

	"But the exact opposite has been happening."

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