China’s Mixed Signals

The president of China’s Supreme People’s Court has announced plans for a major reorganization of the legal system, the goal being “to ensure justice throughout the nation.” Starting next year trials are to be routinely opened to the public, an experiment already begun in Beijing and, as it happens, a right already guaranteed by China’s constitution.

Furthermore, trial by jury instead of a small number of officials is to be encouraged, though without assurance that it will become a regular practice. All this can be cautiously welcomed as a possible step toward developing a more independent judicial system. It comes, however, as China’s leaders are again demonstrating that their intolerance and fear of dissent are unabated.

The evidence comes in the arrests this week of longtime dissident Xu Wenli and a number of his associates who have been trying to organize what they call the China Democracy Party. Xu, who spent 12 years in prison for previously promoting democratic goals, is “suspected of activities which have harmed national security,” according to the Foreign Ministry. That is one of those ambiguous catch-all charges that authoritarian regimes keep handy for use in seizing and silencing dissenters.

Xu and others have been trying for five months to establish the party, which they promised would not challenge the Communist Party’s ruling status or violate any laws. And in October, the government signed the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which aims to assure freedom of assembly, speech and elections. That the government’s first major political act since then has been to arrest citizens who seek to hold it to those guarantees speaks volumes.

The crackdown was foreshadowed in a statement last week by Li Peng, the hard-line speaker of China’s legislature and a former prime minister. He told a German newspaper that China “promotes democracy and practices the rule of law” but that it will not allow a multi-party system or accept any challenge to the party’s power. So much for espousing democracy. So much for the U.N. covenant.

That courageous dissidents in China go on trying to practice the rights their government claims to assure them is something the world’s democracies must applaud and support. Their numbers certainly will grow, if nothing else because the revolution in information technology ensures that their ideas will spread. China, as usual, says the arrests are purely an internal affair. They are not. The arrests mark the limits of China’s fidelity to international covenants. That makes what happened a matter of global concern.