Li Fangping, August 21, 2025

It’s been seven decades since the promulgation of Communist China’s first Constitution in 1954. To evaluate the journey of its rule of law, the successes and failures, I’m going to divide my analysis into four periods.

I. The CCP’s founding leaders never meant to honor PRC’s first Constitution

The 1954 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China guaranteed protections such as the ownership of production materials by capitalists; citizens’ property rights; inheritance rights; a defendant’s right to defense; freedom of speech; personal freedom; and freedom of movement. However, even before the ink on the Constitution had dried, successive political campaigns obliterated these rights.

In 1955, during the “Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries” campaign, the Chinese Communist Party proposed that “counterrevolutionary and other bad elements” identified in the campaign be subjected to “reeducation through labor” without court decisions, stripping away personal freedom. 

In 1956, the campaign for the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce, as well as private housing, eliminated capitalists’ ownership of production materials and citizens’ property rights. Other property rights, such as the right to inheritance, were soon rescinded too. 

In 1957, the Anti-Rightist Campaign suppressed freedom of speech and abolished the lawyer system inherited from the Republic Era, nullifying the right to legal defense. 

In 1958, the Great Leap Forward triggered a massive famine, driving the rural population to leave their homes en mass in search of food. This led to the 1961 establishment of the “detention and repatriation” system, restricting the freedom of movement.

In August 1958, Mao Zedong (毛泽东) stated at a meeting: “Every resolution of our party is law; meetings themselves are law. To maintain order, we rely mainly on these resolutions and meetings, not on regulations, nor on civil or criminal law.” Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇) echoed: “Rule of law or rule of man? In my opinion, it’s the latter, and laws are merely a reference for handling affairs.” 

In other words, it was not the Cultural Revolution or the “Gang of Four” that destroyed the rule of law. Rather, the CCP’s founding leaders had already smashed it in just a few years after enacting the first Constitution.

II. How reconstruction of the legal system in the reform era undermined genuine rule of law

After Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), Peng Zhen (彭真), and other CCP leaders regained power in the late 1970s, they proposed “strengthening socialist rule of law.” However, these architects of legal reconstruction viewed and used the law as a mere instrument of power, and were fully willing to ignore it when necessary.

To illustrate this point, I would like to examine “one person and two events” (“一个人、两件事”) at the outset of this legal reconstruction. “One person” refers to Peng Zhen, who is hailed in CCP’s official history as the “main architect of socialist rule of law.” He served as the Secretary of the Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission and latter Chairman of the National People’s Congress. In his work On Political and Legal Affairs in the New Era (《新时期的政法工作》) in July 1982, Peng emphasized that political and legal institutions must be “politically, ideologically, and organizationally pure, loyal to the Party and socialism.” This was the political foundation of China’s legal system and has been the cornerstone of China’s legal reconstruction in the era of reform.

The “Two Events” refer to 1) the trials of the followers of Lin Biao (林彪) and Jiang Qing (江青) in 1980, and 2) the “Strike Hard” campaign (严打) in 1983 when large numbers of people across the country were arrested and severely punished for minor or no crimes such as dancing parties and street vending.

For the “Two Events,” the Ministry of Justice, which had been newly reinstated in 1979, issued Regulations on Lawyers’ Meeting with Defendants, stipulating that one of the purposes of lawyer-client meetings was to ensure that defendants accepted government appointed legal representation; lawyers must use these meetings as tactics to gather information in order to create smooth conditions for the trial; and If a defendant requested a not-guilty defense, lawyers should refuse politely, explaining to the defendant that a not-guilty defense would be “not only difficult, but also disadvantageous to the defendant.” 

In other words, lawyers’ role in these two sets of trials was not about protecting the right to defense. These trials were political performances with lawyers doing the government’s bidding.

In 1983, Deng Xiaoping launched the “Strike Hard” campaign, stating: “While we don’t call it a campaign to persecute people, we must treat serious criminal offenders as enemies.” Next, CCP directives allowed county-level courts to decide on cases involving the death penalty under the overall leadership of local Party organs. In such cases, the Party, government organs, and military acted in unison, with Party leaders at the equivalent level of administration empowered to directly order capital punishment. Meanwhile, the appeal period was shortened from 10 days to just 3. These measures were implemented right away without legal amendments. 

Similar politically driven judicial campaigns have continued to this day, such as the persecution of Falun Gong that began in 1999, the 2009 Chongqing anti-crime campaign, and the 2018 nationwide anti-crime sweep. The governing logic has remained more or less constant.

Despite these, the reform era achieved a basic legal framework within a decade, including criminal, civil, administrative, and economic contract laws, promulgating among others the Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law, General Principles of Civil Law, and Procedural Law for Administrative Litigation.

III. New legal reforms were launched following Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 Southern Tour, under the principle of ‘stability above all else’

After Deng’s 1992 Southern Tour, political rigidity thawed, and a regime of “market reforms plus stability maintenance” emerged. With the marketization of the economy, reforming the lawyer system came to the front and center. The Soviet-style, government-run legal advisory offices began to transition to partnership-based law firms post-1992, granting lawyers greater autonomy.

In the 1990s, China enacted the Civil Procedural Law, a new Criminal Law, and Criminal Procedural Law; abolished the “custody for investigation” system (收容审查制度); allowed lawyers to meet and defend clients during police investigations; and renamed “counterrevolutionary crime” as “crime endangering national security,” or “crime of subverting state power,” somewhat softening its adversarial nature. 

In October 1998, China signed (but has never ratified) the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In March 1999, “governing the country according to the law” was enshrined in the Constitution.

As tensions with the West eased, Western legal thought, rule of law principles, and human rights concepts entered China through increasing exchanges. 

In June 2001, judges, prosecutors, and lawyers were required to pass a unified national judicial exam. 

The 2003 SARS crisis heightened awareness of civil rights in Chinese society. The Sun Zhigang incident led to the abolition of the “custody and repatriation” system (收容遣送制度) in 2003. In March 2004, “the state respects and protects human rights” was added to the Constitution, empowering a burgeoning group of rights-defending lawyers.

In 2006, to improve its image on the global stage, China issued regulations in 2006 allowing foreign journalists, as well as those from Hong Kong and Macao, more space to report during the Beijing Olympics, which extended post-Olympics. 

In 2007, the Government Information Disclosure Regulations were enacted. 

In November 2013, the abolition of reeducation through labor marked the last major positive development in China’s legal reform.

At the same time, however, the authorities intensified control and suppression of society, and strengthened deceptive propaganda. 

In March 2006, the All-China Lawyers Association issued Guidelines on Handling Mass Protest Cases (《关于律师办理群体性案件指导意见》). On July 23, 2008, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee announced designated protest zones, earning international praise, but no applications were ever approved. 

In 2011, amendments to the Resident Identity Card Law allowed police to check IDs at transport hubs to control petitioners and dissidents. In response to the 2011 “Jasmine Revolution,” the authorities enforced mass forced disappearances, followed by 2012 amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law that introduced the infamous “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL).

IV. A marked reversal in legal reform since 2015

In 2015, the CCP reinstated the rhetoric that “legal institutions are the Party’s knife handle,” marking a clear reversal in Chinese legal reform. In January 2015, Xi Jinping instructed that the “knife handle” must remain firmly in the hands of the “Party and the people,” a directive propagated through Party-run media and the mouthpieces of the law enforcement and judiciary.

Over the past decade, in my opinion, five events have highlighted the collapse of any semblance of rule of law:

— The “709” crackdown on human rights lawyers.

— The March 2018 constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits. It was conducted secretly, swiftly, and without debate or criticism, severely undermining prior legal reforms.

— The 2018 Supervision Law (《中华人民共和国监察法》has created a Party-state judicial entity with minimal oversight, further eroding citizens’ rights.

— Amendments to government information disclosure and judicial document transparency, restricting access and making openness the exception, rather than the norm.

— Strengthened national security legislation, with over 20 laws enacted and more forthcoming, per official reports.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.