China's Quest for Justice

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Of course, China's news media, which are still subject to Party control, are often unable to cover the most sensitive cases. One story that has been reported extensively in the foreign press but that has remained off limits to journalists in China is the case of Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal activist detained by police last year after he tried to help victims of a forced-abortion campaign sue their local government. Convicted in August of destroying property and "organizing a mob to block traffic," Chen was sentenced to four years in prison. A higher court ordered a retrial, but the conviction and sentence were upheld.

Among those rooting for Chen was Gao Zhisheng, a feisty lawyer who has represented underground Christians and members of the banned Falun Gong sect. Gao wore a "Free Chen Guangcheng" T shirt and spoke openly of his contempt for what he called "the gangster Communist Party" (even though he's a member). This fall, he was arrested on charges of inciting subversion. Arrests like these have sparked debate among lawyers about tactics. Teng Biao, a lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law, says Gao's willingness to push the envelope has widened the space "for other more moderate lawyers to become more vocal." But Mo Shaoping, a veteran defense lawyer, says Gao's political activities—such as hunger striking and signing petitions—may have spooked the authorities into tightening restrictions. Like many in the field, Mo is both a philosophical and tactical gradualist. "If you want to cook a frog, you can't just throw it into boiling water," he says. "If you do that, it just flies out of the pot. You have to start with cold water and turn up the heat slowly." Despite their differences in approach, Mo quickly accepted a request by Gao's brother to serve as Gao's defense attorney. However, Mo says he has been denied access to his client on the premise that the case involves state secrets. Last week, he adds, the judges who will hear the case told him that Gao had refused representation: "I asked to see proof of this in writing, but they refused me."

Gao's arrest is just one example of the daunting obstacles these lawyers still face. Many say that as their visibility has increased, so have measures deployed to control them. Earlier this year the All China Lawyers Association, a national organization that attorneys are required to join, issued new guidelines stipulating that law firms should assign only "politically qualified" lawyers to handle cases involving joint litigation by 10 or more plaintiffs or issues related to safeguarding rights. Lawyers taking such cases were ordered to "accept supervision and guidance" or else be subject to punishment. According to a lawyer involved in the drafting of that document, "the original was intended to increase protection for lawyers, but then higher authorities intervened and made it do just the opposite." The authorities' strategy, says Nicholas Becquelin, Hong Kong representative of New York-based Human Rights Watch, is a "tightening of administrative controls over lawyers on the one hand and a crackdown on the most outspoken elements on the other hand."

Still, it's hard to find lawyers involved in public-interest work who aren't optimistic about the long term. They believe that even under the current system incremental progress toward the protection of rights is possible. "Sometimes I feel like I'm storming an impregnable fortress," says Guo, the women's advocate. "But we have had a few concrete victories." Last year, Guo and her colleagues successfully lobbied to eliminate a regulation forbidding female graduate students from becoming pregnant. "We can't change everything overnight," says scholar Teng Biao. "But even the leaders recognize they must reform the system if they want to resolve societal problems."

Chen Bulei believes there is room for China's leaders to be convinced that it serves their own long-term interests to safeguard the legal rights of people like the miner Zhao. Chen, a member of the Communist Party with a Ph.D. from a top law school, once worked as a policeman and later as a judge in a Beijing court. Both experiences, he says, strengthened his conviction that China needs more people who can "demonstrate to the leadership that the rule of law needs to be strengthened and that citizens' rights should expand." In the legal-theory classes that Chen teaches at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, he requires his students to memorize and recite the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "I call this forced enlightenment," he says. "If they can't memorize it, I tell them to read it out loud." One day, he hopes, such enlightenment will spread from the classroom to the courtroom.