New Regulations on Discipline from CCP's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection

By Jerome A. Cohen

The new regulations on discipline from the CCP's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection are fascinating and worthy of serious research. How are targets of discipline selected? Is the clause on prohibited reading merely used as an add-on in cases where other charges are brought or is it sometimes applied independently? What procedures apply and how is evidence introduced and evaluated? What Communist Party and administrative sanctions are applied in what circumstances? To what extent does the CCDI system send cases to the courts for criminal punishments? To what extent does the CCDI system influence the handling of such criminal cases by the police, the procuracy and the courts?

I believe that, under the awning of the National Supervisory Commission, certain non-Party members are also subject to these strictures if they are government officials of one kind or other. Is there anyone out there who knows and is free to tell us? It must be a matter of considerable interest to the millions who are subject to this discipline. 

Reflections on Jiang Zemin

By Jerome A. Cohen

I have enjoyed the media obituaries and listserv commentaries on Jiang Zemin but hope that there will eventually be appraisals of his contributions to PRC efforts to establish government under law in the post-Tiananmen era. Some very significant criminal justice reforms were adopted when the nation’s Criminal Procedure Law was revised in 1996, and many legislative and regulatory reforms relating to the economy took place in order to make the PRC a plausible candidate for the WTO. Prime Minister Zhu Rongji played a key role regarding the latter, of course, and did recognize the importance of the rule of law to foreign investors. Yet I don’t recall Jiang Zemin saying much of significance about law reform.

I do vaguely recall my disappointment at his reaction to a question about a human rights case that I managed to get someone to ask him at an appearance in Washington. I wanted to bring to his attention - and the public’s - the arbitrary detention of a dissident whose family I was advising. He simply dismissed the question by saying that, since the Public Security Bureau had taken the action, he was sure that the government had reasonable grounds for acting. I would have been wiser to try “the back door” by asking Wang Daohan, whom I knew fairly well and who was thought to be important in promoting Jiang’s rise, to put in a quiet word for my client.