China's socialist rule of law still offers real hope of improvements to legal system

Over 50 years ago, when I began to study the roles of law in Chinese life, some American China specialists thought I had chosen the one subject that the "central realm" had never regarded as important. I wonder what they would make of the just-concluded Central Committee plenary session that, for the first time in its long series of annual meetings, focused the attention of the Communist Party, the people and the world on "ruling the country according to law" and "the rule of law".

For the past fortnight, observers have been striving to decipher the documents issued by the fourth plenum of the 18th party congress. First came the lengthy and mind-numbing communiqué that endorsed a laundry list of often conflicting changes in the legal system that reformers of one type or another had previously recommended. Several days later came the plenum's decision. It had been expected to give more concrete and consistent definitions to the many ambitions articulated among the communiqué's ideological platitudes and legal clichés. Yet, with a few exceptions, it proved disappointingly vague. Fortunately, the decision was accompanied by an "explanation" delivered by party General Secretary Xi Jinping that, while hardly free of sleep-inducing jargon, nevertheless promoted understanding of how the decision had developed and the ideas underlying its organisation and objectives.

Analysts have already spilled a huge amount of ink parsing these documents. Drawn to the many references to "rule of law", in the sense of placing the government and the party, as well as everyone else, under the restraints of the constitution and legislation, at least one foreign commentator speculated that this might be a historical turning point, the equivalent in China's millennial authoritarian tradition of King John's reluctant grant of the Magna Carta to English nobles. Others, properly noting the even more prominent and contradictory emphasis on strengthening the party's existing monopolisation of the legal system, branded "socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics" a political oxymoron. Some Chinese human rights lawyers, who have taken temporary refuge abroad from the regime's ever greater repression, simply dismissed the fourth plenum as worthless sophistry.

These documents offer a kind of Rorschach test in which the viewer can find support for whatever is of interest or concern. There is something for everyone. To an American, their breadth, imprecise promises and inconsistent recommendations are reminiscent of the political platforms that Republicans and Democrats produce every four years to accompany the campaigns of their presidential candidates but that no one takes very seriously.