Years of Poems and Spirits

March 23

Several judiciary events were placed juxtaposition to each other:

In a 5-3 ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that the police must obtain a warrant to search a home where the occupants disagree on consent to the search…

Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema reversed her own decision and allowed tainted witnesses to testify in Zacarias Moussaoui’s sentencing trial.

The Pentagon formally bars evidence obtained through torture at Guantanamo Bay. Its spokesman commented that the reason the ban was not there before was the U.S. never admitted to using torture. By having such a ban, he said, it would create a false impression.

Other related events: Guantanamo prisioners cannot appeal their imprisionment; do not have access to lawyers or bona fide trials; they cannot even escape this living hell by taking their own lives.

Thoughts: rule of law, everyone is equal before the law, Rummy the “Secretary of Torture”

My good friend, Sam Zhong, used to be a reporter for China Legal Daily (法制日报). He told me a personal story today that prompted me to re-think the constant debate about China’s Central-Local administrative model. The central government’s role seems to be a safety valve–not by definition but by expectation.

The story itself is enough a thriller that could earn a director from a third-world country some awards from Western film festivals. Sam was reporting from a city in Henan (河南) when he was sought out by some local policemen. They had a grievance against their chief, who was so corrupt that he sold police cars for personal wealth. The story developed in a spy movie fashion: meetings were conducted in secrecy; threats were made and attempted; an official from city government was assigned both as a guard and as a monitor; and so on. Finally, it took a couple of car-switchings–all police cars, no less–to shake off the bad guys and sent Sam to safety.

Suspense aside, what really impressed me was how much power a 20-something reporter wielded just because he worked for a central government paper. At one point, Sam stared down the guards and kicked open the door of mayor’s office by screaming: nobody touches me! I am from the central government! On his last day in town, before he was safely smuggled out of harms way, he found himself besieged by petitioners lining up in front of his hotel room. They had other wrongs they wanted the man from the central government to hear and to right (not “to write”, mind you). The fact that he lived in the best hotel in town and dinned with the very people he investigated did not warrant any explanation as Sam retold his story.

Some China scholars, e.g. 李怀印, think that the central government’s power has always been limited to county level or above. Others suggest local power circles around large family-estate was a myth (秦晖?). But what Sam’s story suggests is that the relative position between central and local power locuses is more hierarchical than horizontal. The hierarchical relation is important to the unique structure of Chinese society: people may live in a enclosed locality but remain unquestioningly submissive to the central power, because it is expected to be a fair arbitrator and the only check on local abusers.

From engineering point of view, this type of structure is labored and ultimately leads to the question: who is checking the central government? However, practically, this poses an enormous challenge to reformers as such a balance-by-external-force structure has been so engraved in Chinese cognition that to change it is like digging a tunnel under a sand dune: any superficial changes will be quickly offset by people reacting to enforce their known concept of government.

Local elections, for example, are meant to forge local “sovereignty” in which there exists checks and balances. But how likely locals will resort to next election to voice their displeasure? Or how likely local crooks will change their behaviors rather than cook the elections? I won’t be surprised that people are more likely to add “election fraud” as a new complaint to be filed with the central government.