Anyone holding onto the notion that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) taking office — along with his oft-publicized crackdown on corruption — would actually bring major changes should have been disabused of that dream by now. Yes, Xi is in the early days of his administration and cannot rock the boat too much until he has fully consolidated his grip on power, but the signs this summer show that in many, many ways it will be business as usual in China.
The most recent example of politically motivated sentencing proves China’s judicial system remains a farce and is unlikely to change any time soon. The latest person to fall afoul the system appears to only be guilty of the “crime” of being the brother of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s (劉曉波) wife, Liu Xia (劉霞).
Liu Hui’s (劉暉) 11-year prison term was upheld yesterday after he appealed his June conviction on fraud charges. The 3 million yuan (US$490,000) real-estate dispute the charges were based upon had been resolved before the case ever went to court. Prosecutors only actively pursued the case after several rights activists and foreign reporters in December last year were able to evade the guards that have kept Liu Xia basically under house arrest since her husband was awarded the Nobel.
Coincidently — or not — 11 years is what Liu Xiaobo was given for allegedly inciting subversion by seeking support for democratic reforms and co-authoring Charter 08. Compare those terms with the three-year sentence a former vice mayor of Wenzhou received yesterday for allotting a plot of land to a private company in a deal that reportedly cost the government 116 million yuan.
So if a defendant is a Chinese Communist Party official who costs the country tens of millions of yuan, he gets just three years, but a private citizen allegedly involved in a transaction that was a fraction of that amount gets almost four times the official’s sentence.
Of course China is not the only authoritarian government to use its legal system as a sledgehammer to pulverize those who do not agree with it. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration famously put a dead man on trial, last month convicting Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in prison under suspicious circumstances in 2009, of tax evasion. Russian officials said the posthumous trial was necessary to “ensure justice was done.” And three members of the punk band Pussy Riot were last year sentenced to two years in a penal colony for a protest against the Russian Orthodox Church’s support for Putin.
Taiwan’s own history is filled with questionable cases prosecuted under the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime during the Martial Law era, something the current administration would like people to forget. There has been some judicial reform since martial law was lifted, but there have also been instances of backsliding. At least there is a chance of reform in this nation, thanks to the efforts of the Judicial Reform Foundation and others.
However, China’s vindictive and party-controlled judiciary is something that Taiwanese should be wary of as this nation is pushed closer to Beijing by the current administration. With more Taiwanese seeking employment or investing in China every day, few think about the risk they are running by working and living in a nation that does not follow the rule of law.
There could not be a better metaphor for China’s ridiculous claims to judicial process than the example this week of a zoo in Luohe that has apparently been trying to pass off a large furry dog as a lion and another dog as a wolf, among other questionable exhibits. The Tibetan mastiff is big — and furry — but it is clearly not feline.
Xi’s government holds up the constitution of the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to prove it has a legal regime and its citizens have rights. However, like the dog puffed up to pass as a lion, China’s judicial system is a poor imitation of the real thing.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations