Will China be a better place in 2030? Any serious answer to this question needs to consider the development of the legal system in the People's Republic of China (PRC). To improve your understanding of this key instrument of change, this is a book you should read. It deals, mainly, with a particular aspect of that broad-picture development: the weiquan (or “rights defence”) movement. Here, the law is being put to work to protect basic livelihood rights and to protect citizens from abuses of power by instrumentalities of the state. This, in truth, is just one aspect of the development of the legal system in the PRC. Arguably a small part thereof – but still singular and significant.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has created a remarkable “New China.” One which stands upon the foundations of more than 2,000 years of enduring political-social evolution. By most relevant measures, the PRC can lay claim to being the largest, most durable and most successful one-party state the world has seen. How has such an authoritarian political behemoth come to allow the growth of this weiquan movement? That it has done so gives some hint about the durability of this one-party state: for Beijing weiquan, on balance, made good political management sense when introduced. The existence of this movement within such a political entity also explains that special significance noted above.
Jonathan Benney has done a fine job in bringing together, in a single book, an inclusive review of the development of the weiquan movement and its often-harassed, always resilient, trajectory since it emerged more than a decade ago. The author has researched in depth, he has spoken with numbers of active practitioners and he has also interviewed other academics who have made the study of this area of legal development a special focus. What emerges is a comprehensive, often absorbing narrative.
Benney notes how the movement was originally encouraged by Beijing to promote the law and protect the rights of the weak – not least in the provinces and hinterland. He looks, too, in significant depth at the role of the media and social media in the PRC, within the context of this rights-protecting movement. Weiquan lawyers have been continually learning from experience. This is something the Chinese have demonstrated a special aptitude for over centuries, so Beijing probably was not surprised when the weiquan movement which they originally devised moved beyond that primary formulation. Persuasion, harassment, intimidation and worse have since emerged to convince weiquan practitioners of the costs of non-conformist behaviour: more lessons from deep history set to work.
Benney also looks at what the future may hold and what role the now evolved weiquan movement may play in reshaping this very special, highly disciplined one-party state. I share the author's watchful – affirmative perspective; the powers of the state are more diffuse today but are still fearsomely immense.
As noted, the weiquan movement has proved itself to be very good at learning as it goes and building a sense of fundamental mutuality – no small achievement given the (sometimes prickly) competitiveness which also flourishes. Existing practitioners do seem to inspire yet more to join the movement. Not surprising when one considers factors such as: the immense problems of the politically and economically weak within the PRC; the remarkable growth in the number of law schools and eager graduates; the more independent role of the conventional media; and the swiftly growing impact of all forms of internet-based media.
Benney's book got me thinking, too, beyond the topics which it traverses. The dark challenges in China – including those related to poverty and underdevelopment, exploitation, corruption and entrenched problems of governance accountability – make it easy to understand why the state constantly looms as a potential or actual menace. Basic political rights for the vast majority have yet to be fundamentally secured.
Yet in the quest to address this challenge, it is not too early for China to consider the dangers of “rights fundamentalism” as it has gathered pace, especially in the developed Anglo-West. One need look no further than the increasing incoherence of First Amendment jurisprudence coming from the US Supreme Court (it now guarantees a “freedom to lie,” for example – see United States v. Alvarez, 567 United States Reports [2012]). In Litter: How Other People's Rubbish Shapes Our Lives (Gibson Square, 2011, p. 98), Theodore Dalrymple captures the essence of today's secular rights-veneration well: “Any form of correction, however mildly phrased or studiously restrained, [constitutes] an assault on a person's conception of himself as the Sun King of his own soul.”
Next, China has retained, despite immense strains (consider the Cultural Revolution), the most powerful set of deeply rooted “social institutions” (pivoting around the family) within any extant culture (see Nolan Cormac Sharkey, “Considering different approaches to tax law in ASEAN and China” in N.C. Sharkey (ed.) Taxation in ASEAN and China: Local Institutions, Regionalism, Global Systems and Economic Development Routledge, 2012). These social institutions have proved their durability over many centuries. They are primary. They long pre-date the CCP and the one-party state. And weiquan, however it develops, will do so within this context. Recent scholarship, such as that mentioned above, has demonstrated just how powerfully shaping these social institutions can be with respect, for example, to the operation of taxation law in the PRC.
