New York Times, Beijing :Communist Party leaders, seeking to address widespread dissatisfaction with China’s politicized and corrupt judiciary, endorsed a raft of legal changes on Thursday to foster a more predictable legal system while keeping the courts under the firm control of the party.The proposals, promoted by the state news media as a landmark in “governing the country according to law,” emerged from a secretive, four-day party Central Committee meeting that ended Thursday.”Fairness is the lifeline of rule of law,” the committee said, according to a summary of the proceedings published by the official Xinhua news agency. “Judicial injustice is fatally destructive of social fairness.”Although the communiqué was short on specifics, the party’s embrace of a more impartial, rules-based approach to settling legal disputes and prosecuting criminals could have potentially sweeping consequences, which supporters said would bring more order to China’s legal system and which critics said were unlikely to address the worst abuses.Experts said that, at their best, the proposed changes could temper some of the injustices that have prompted dispossessed farmers, unpaid factory workers and shortchanged investors to take to the streets.But they warned that the changes would do little to curtail the power of the party, which is increasingly intolerant of challenges to its authority, and were unlikely to strip courts of political influence and meddling by local officials.In particular, phrases in the communiqué like “people’s rights” and “rule of law” could be misconstrued, analysts say, because the party’s definitions differ vastly from Western ideals of an independent judiciary and inviolable rights.Indeed, the statement left little doubt that the Communist Party would retain ultimate control over the legal system.”Socialist rule of law must uphold the party’s leadership, and party leadership must rely on socialist rule of law,” it said. “Only with government according to the law, and implementation of rule of law under the party’s leadership can the people truly be masters of their own home.”But in seeking to reshape the nation’s court system – by improving training and pay for judges and taking court budgets and appointments out of the hands of local officials – President Xi Jinping is trying to prevent the kind of interference in court cases that has angered ordinary Chinese and intensified mistrust in the Communist Party.The proposals that have been discussed would also transfer the purse strings for judicial operations to provincial governments, depriving the local authorities of their influence when it comes to, say, courtroom repairs or staff salaries, and they would give judges the ability to rule on cases without approval from a higher-ranking judge. The power to make judicial appointments may also be removed from the local authorities.”This is something that has to be done if the party wants to maintain legitimacy, because legitimacy is not just made by abstract concepts and buzzwords,” said Flora Sapio, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies China’s legal system. “You have to deliver something to the people.”But she and other legal experts noted that Mr. Xi had no interest in creating a judiciary that could rule against the party’s policies and interests, particularly in cases that are politically delicate or that could lead to social unrest.Since Mr. Xi became party leader in 2012, the Chinese government has taken steps to address some of the system’s more glaring deficiencies. The judicial authorities have overturned a string of wrongful convictions of people sentenced to death or long prison terms. And while China still executes more people than all other countries combined, the use of capital punishment declined 20 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group based in San Francisco.Last year, the government abolished re-education through labor, a decades-old system of imprisonment without trial, although it has preserved other channels for extrajudicial detention. In June, party leaders also endorsed a set of experimental initiatives intended to make China’s roughly 3,500 courts and 20,000 judges more professional and consistent in applying the law.Chinese judges often have no practical legal experience before joining the courts in their 20s, although lawyers say the system has greatly improved since the days when many cases were adjudicated by former police officers or decommissioned military officers without legal training.Still, China’s judges have been struggling with expanding workloads and annual salaries that start at $8,000. In 2013, Chinese courts accepted 14.2 million cases, including appeals, retrials and enforcement hearings, an increase of 7.4 percent over the previous year, according to the Supreme People’s Court. Some judges handle 700 or 800 cases a year while juggling mounds of paperwork, He Fan, a judicial official, wrote last year in the court’s newspaper.With salaries and appointments controlled by the local authorities, judges often find themselves doing the bidding of influential officials or the Communist Party legal committees that are installed in every courthouse. He Haibo, a law professor at Tsinghua University, said many Chinese judges were demoralized by their inability to rule on cases without interference.”They are deeply frustrated, and it can be very humiliating when a judge doesn’t agree with a verdict but, under various pressures, has to sign his or her name to it,” he said. “Chinese judges can’t afford to claim authority, sometimes not even dignity.”
