For most of us – if we aren’t actually making a living at the law-then the less the courts touch us the happier that we will be. That goes with knobs on and three bags full sir, for other national legal systems and I would happily risk my own money to wager that if there is one of those ubiquitous internet listings entitled ‘THE TEN JURISDICTIONS THAT YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO TANGLE WITH’ that China would sit close to the top of the league table.
That all being the case it has been interesting to say the least to spend a little time with a group of Chinese court officials on study tour here and looking to engage with some of their counterparts in our own system.
As is often the case with these visits it is the questions that they ask about our system that cast a light of the real problems and challenges that they see in their own.( Although finding myself in the middle of a debate in a Broad Street Hotel meeting room conducted principally in Mandarin about the precise nature of UK laws on the possession of cannabis was an unexpected diversion to say the least.)
For example, there was a particular focus on the protection of the interests of people under police investigation or in custody. Queries were raised along the lines of how human right were safeguarded here; how we ensured that police were scrupulous in the way they gathered evidence – and maybe just a little chillingly what was done here to prevent illegal detention and gathering of evidence by police and specifically what measures and processes were in place to prevent violence being used by police to provide evidence and confessions.
At the other end of the spectrum however there was even more interest in the way in which non custodial punishment and probation might be used to manage offending. Questions ranged from who is eligible for this form of punishment; how is its effectiveness assessed; how much does it cost; who can become a probation officer; how are they selected and trained.
The focus of interest on probation is itself intriguing. China has about 1.5 million people officially recorded as being in prison. In per capita terms it is a rather modest figure when compared internationally and rather lower than is the case in the UK but it is one of those Chinese statistics at which one might raise a more than questioning eyebrow. ‘Re-education through labour’ camps which had existed since the days of the cultural revolution were places to which someone could be confined simply on the say-so of the police and without recourse to the courts or other due process. They tended to be used to manage various behaviour regarded as socially deviant – like drug abuse. They were formally abolished a year ago and some 160,000 people previously confined in them have been released.
However close watches of the Chinese scene suggest that some have simply been re-labelled as drug rehabilitation centres – though the scale of rehabilitation work therein may be limited. There is a similar network of camps for sex workers and there continues to be apparent recourse to psychiatric hospitals for managing some’ anti-social’ behaviour. None of these are thought to involve the courts and sentencing procedures.
There’s a hard nosed view that might say that if China takes a rather high handed approach to the human rights of some people at the margins of society then that’s their own affair. There’s an equally hard nosed view that says that if we are going to do business with China then we need a clear commitment to the rule of law to protect contracts and our interests and that that is more likely to happen to the rule of law approach is all-encompassing rather than fitting where it touches.
The trial – albeit a show trial – of Bo Xilai last year was seen as a commitment to ‘rule of law’. The hauling of former internal security chief Zhou Yongkang from the traditional safe haven of retirement to face charges is seen as further reinforcing this. These moves – particularly the second one – seems to underline the strong personal authority of Xi Jinping. That in turn is seen as meaning that the programme of economic reform which Xi unveiled last year is more likely to be implemented and that a wider opening of Chinese markets – particularly in the service sector –might be forthcoming. And for UK plc that is pretty important stuff.
That an earnest discussion by a group of Chinese bureaucrats in a Birmingham hotel might feed its way into that process is fascinating and somehow surreal at the same time.
