BEIJING (Reuters) – China has ordered stricter adherence to the ruling Communist Party and leader Xi Jinping’s directives in legal education and opposes and resists “Western fallacies such as constitutional government, separation of powers and judicial independence.”
The decree, which came on Sunday a week before China’s ceremonial parliament began its annual session, marks the ideological leadership of Xi, who has been named in documents 25 times. This is to reconfirm the role of Xi, already China’s most powerful leader in decades, was given his five-year term for the third time as party leader last year, lifting the president’s term limit and effectively reigning for life.
Similar guidelines have been published in the past, in which students are encouraged to report on professors who speak favorably of Western concepts of governance.
Despite the intertwining of China and the global economy, President Xi has sought to rid the education system of liberal Western concepts and mandated the “Sinicization” of foreign religions in order to operate in China. He also attempted to reshape popular culture in a more conservative direction, with limited success.
Legal professionals have been particularly targeted, and in the early hours of July 9, 2015, three years into Xi’s first term, a series of nationwide raids led to nearly 300 human rights lawyers and their A close activist was arrested. Under such constant pressure, activist defenders were intimidated into silence, effectively preventing dissent and the emergence of public intellectuals independent of the party.
Such an approach would be consistent with Mr. Xi’s more aggressive foreign policy aimed at challenging and potentially replacing the US-led international order of multiparty democracy, civil society and human rights. I am doing it.
The Executive Committee’s directive states that law teachers, students and legal theorists must be guided to “take a clear stance and take firm stances in the face of fundamental questions and important questions of right and wrong.” says it must. The Secretariat circulates information, including draft policies and memos, within the party, which has 96 million members.
In a section titled ”Adhere to the Correct Political Direction,” the directive says teachers and students must “comprehensively implement the party’s education policy, insist on educating people for the party and the country, and focus on cultivating builders and successors of the cause of socialist rule of law.”
“Oppose and resist Western erroneous views such as ‘constitutional government,’ ‘separation of three powers,’ and ‘independence of the judiciary,’ it says.
While China’s constitution pays lip service to ideas such as freedom of speech and religious observation, it places the interests of the party above all. Past attempts at promoting even grassroots democracy at the village level have sputtered in the face of the party’s overwhelming power and the authorities’ willingness to use force and coercion to achieve their desired outcomes.
Criticism of the party and government policies is much more lively online, despite censorship and the threat of punishment for those who create and disseminate them.
The annual session of the National People’s Congress, comprised of 2,977 handpicked members, opens Sunday with an annual report on the work of government presented by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang. The chairman of the commission will issue a report in recent years that also includes commitments to abandon Western political governments such as separation of powers and an independent judicial system.
