MCLC: Bo trial (6)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo trial (6)
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (9/2/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/world/asia/china-debates-effect-on-law-of
-bo-xilais-trial.html

China Debates Effect of Trial’s Rare Transparency
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — The melodramatic trial of Bo Xilai, the former elite Communist
Party official, has been trumpeted by the state news media here as a sure
sign that Chinese citizens enjoy the benefits of a robust legal system.

On Monday, Study Times, a weekly party journal, published a commentary
titled “A Look at Judicial Openness Through the Bo Trial,” which was
typical of the line taken by other state news media organizations. It
argued that the transparency and process of the five-day trial “displayed
China’s confidence: the confidence of the rule of law; confidence of the
facts; confidence of the ability to distinguish right from wrong.”

Few legal and political analysts would make such grand assertions. But
there is a debate in China over whether the trial, in which Mr. Bo was
charged with bribetaking, embezzlement and abuse of power, has contributed
to any progress in establishing an independent judiciary with due process
in this country, where the party rules the courts, or whether it amounted
to little more than political theater.

Perhaps the clearest sign that the trial was a show — if a spectacular
one, with salacious testimony about a love triangle, a multimillion-dollar
French vacation villa and a private jet to Tanzania — came in the form of
relentless headlines and articles in the official news media that
condemned Mr. Bo even as the trial was still unfolding.

Most Chinese followed the trial through this coverage, and they saw
headlines like this one on the Web site of People’s Daily, the party
mouthpiece: “Prosecutors: Bo Xilai Pleads Not Guilty, so He Must Be
Strictly Punished.”

The party also kept the charges confined mostly to financial
transgressions from early in Mr. Bo’s career and did not address the human
rights abuses from his recent stint as party chief of Chongqing, because
that would have touched on party politics. And political analysts and
party insiders say a guilty verdict for Mr. Bo has almost certainly been
predetermined.

Some liberal legal scholars, though, have praised the relative
transparency of the trial, because party leaders unexpectedly allowed many
of the edited court transcripts to be posted on a running court microblog
even if crucial testimony that implicated other leaders was kept secret.
“It was open, and the defendant’s rights were well protected,” said Zhang
Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University. Another scholar, Tong
Zhiwei, said: “The Bo trial was more open than any other corruption trial
of high-ranking officials in China.”

The trial could impress on some Chinese the importance of legal
procedures, analysts said. Viewed through that prism, the trial was an
extraordinary one: several important witnesses for the prosecution
appeared in court, giving Mr. Bo the chance to cross-examine them; the
judges allowed Mr. Bo to state that he wanted to retract a confession he
had made under “mental strain”; and the transcripts gave the public a
(somewhat blurred) window into the courtroom.

These are all elements missing from most Chinese criminal trials. The
length of the trial also came as a surprise to many — previous trials of
this nature, including the related ones last year of Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu
Kailai, and the former police chief of Chongqing, Wang Lijun, lasted just
one or two days. Ms. Gu was convicted of the murder of a British
businessman, and Mr. Wang of defection and other crimes.

One person with contacts in the justice system said on the day the trial
ended last week that senior officials were already disseminating internal
orders within the nationwide security and justice system that said the
process in the Bo trial should be studied. The officials were suggesting
that the court proceedings and actions of the judges could serve as a
model for enacting proper procedure, the person said.

But it was unclear what this would mean for long-term changes for the
judiciary, and how this might overlap with a new attempt at judicial
reforms announced last month by Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme
People’s Court.

Even legal scholars who applauded the new style evident in Mr. Bo’s trial
recognize that it was an exception and not necessarily a model. Given Mr.
Bo’s popularity among ordinary Chinese, which he bolstered by pushing
neo-socialist policies in Chongqing, and his revolutionary family’s
standing within the party, leaders no doubt felt compelled to allow Mr. Bo
his say, within narrow parameters.

The trial could, in theory, win over skeptics who were convinced the
purging of Mr. Bo last year was the result of political rivalries.
Allowing the public to see Mr. Bo cross-examining witnesses added
legitimacy to the trial, and the more impassioned his arguments became,
the more the public would believe he had been given a sufficient platform.

That seemed to be the calculation, at least, but many of Mr. Bo’s
supporters, especially residents of Chongqing, in southwest China, remain
unconvinced.

“We all agree that he is the victim of a political power struggle, that
his fall had absolutely nothing to do with a paltry 20 million renminbi,”
said Li Meishu, a young elementary school music teacher in Chongqing,
referring roughly to the amount in bribes that Mr. Bo and his family are
accused of taking.

Many others have echoed Ms. Li’s sentiments. Party leaders had obviously
hoped that ordinary Chinese had become so upset at endemic corruption that
attaching a $3.5 million figure to the bribes Mr. Bo was accused of taking
would be enough to tar him. But corruption has become so widespread that
many Chinese see the figure as a hypocritical cover for a political purge.

Legal scholars say the Bo trial is unlikely to be replicated wholesale
across the justice system, even if the party leader, Xi Jinping, has
pledged to bring down “tigers and flies” in an anti-corruption drive.
Since the investigation into Mr. Bo, there have been notable inquiries
into other so-called tigers accused of corruption, including Jiang Jiemin,
the Central Committee member close to Zhou Yongkang, the former security
chief and ally of Mr. Bo. Mr. Jiang was fired from his job overseeing
state-owned corporations on Tuesday.

But none of those figures have a grip on the public imagination like Mr.
Bo does, and their cases, if they went to trial, would not necessarily
demand as many trappings of legal legitimacy.

Likewise, there is little in the way of due process to be seen in the
recent clampdown on free speech, which includes detentions of liberal
Chinese citizens. Xu Zhiyong, a prominent rights lawyer, was formally
arrested last month on charges of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in
a public place,” which many see as a pretense to silence him.

Such criticism has also swirled around the recent arrest of Charles Xue, a
Chinese-American businessman who has been detained on suspicion of
soliciting prostitutes. Rather than cinch his guilt, the state television
broadcast of his confession has raised questions for many about legal
rights; the same has been asked of a televised confession by Peter
Humphrey, a British financial investigator.

Mr. Bo was given leeway to speak in court, but there were obvious limits.
He commented mainly on his family’s lifestyle and finances. The public
transcripts did not show him raising questions about the political
infighting that many say led to his downfall. According to unofficial
written records from a court observer, he spoke of rivalry for top
positions and of taking orders from a party agency run by Zhou Yongkang in
a cover-up plan, but those remarks were kept out of the official
transcripts, as were instances when he talked about specific threats made
by investigators.

“Bo Xilai served the party very well in the trial,” Chongyi Feng, an
associate professor of China studies at the University of Technology,
Sydney, said in an e-mail. “He ‘demonstrated’ the progress of the rule of
law in China with his rigorous defense. He also toed the bottom line and
protected the party by not revealing any scandals of his former Politburo
colleagues. Understandably the verdict negotiated before the trial will be
released in due course, irrespective of the court procedures.”

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li, Shi Da and Amy Qin
contributed research.