Govern Police by Law (Yifa Zhijing) in China
| Author | Kam C. Wong |
| DOI | 10.1177/00048658040370S106 |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Govern Police
by
Law
(fi!
Zhijing)
in China
~
Kam
C.Wong
University ofWisconsin, United
States
ofAmerica
his article
is
a first attempt to investigate into and report on the
T
People’s Republic of China police law reform effort
-
objectives,
process and result
-
since
1978.
In
so
doing, the article catalogues the
past, describes the present, and speculates on the future. It argues that
police law reform in China
is
a reaction to a growing police legitimacy
crisis
attenuating the relationship between police and the public.
‘An organization must have rules
.
.
.’
Mao Zedong (1954, p. 145)
As
the
police of the People’s Republic of China
(PRC)
moves into its third decade
of post-1978 reform, it is confronted with many age-old problems, for example,
corruption and abuse of power, and is faced
with
still more new challenges, for
example, the dogmatism, formalism and bureaucratisation that are
a
legacy of its
Maoist past.
Of
all the challenges confronting the
PRC
political leadership and
police administrators during the reform period
(
1978-2004),
the most urgent
problems are those of a breakdown of personal relationships in society and
a
loss
of
political legitimacy
in
the eyes
of
the people (Chen,
2001,
pp.
6-70).
The discov-
ery of a ‘police legitimacy crisis’ points to the need for more comprehensive police
legal reform than has hitherto been undertaken (Wong,
2002).
This article is an attempt to investigate into and report on the
PRC
police law
reform effort
-
objective, process and result
-
since 1978, with
a
focus on more
recent developments, namely, the
PRC
Police Law of 1995 and
its
implementation.
The examination of police law reform tells a story of how the
PRC
police comes to
reinvent itself through law, or
yifa
shijing.
The first section is devoted to making
a
case for police legal reform, that
is,
an erosion
of
police legitimacy calling for more
police accounting through law. The second section provides a brief review of police
legal development since
1949.
The third traces the ideas and ideals of the current
police law reform movement to Peng Zhen, a revolutionary communist of some
50
years ago, and is followed
by
an account of the doctrine of
yifa
shijing,
which
informs and drives the current police law reform movement. The fourth describes
Address for correspondence: Kam
C.
Wong, Associate Professor, Department of Public
Affairs, University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh), Oshkosh, USA. E-mail: wong@uwosh.edu
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GOVERN POLICE
BY
LAW
(YIFA
ZHIJING)
IN
CHINA
the effort to bring
PRC
police rules and regulations under one comprehensive and
integrated structure. The
fifth
discusses the measures taken to supervise the police
with
law. The concluding section summarises the observations made in this article
and speculates on the future of the law reform movement in China.
The Context for Police Legal Reform:
The Police Legitimacy Crisis
Increasingly, the
PRC
police have been accused of engaging in all kinds of illegal,
irregular, abusive and unprofessional activities, including ‘using power for personal
gain’
(yiqwln
mou si),
‘totally disregarding human life’
(caojian
renming),
‘engaging
in crime and wrongdoing’
(weifei-zuodai),
‘practising interrogation
by
torture’
(xingxun
bigong),
‘conspiring to engage in illegality’
(xunban zishi),
‘perpetrating
misrepresentation and fraud’
(nongxu-zuojia),
‘engaging in abominable conduct’
(taidu elie),
‘dallying
with
role and status’
(wangnong
jizhou),
‘partaking in personal
corruption’
(shenghuo
fuhua;
‘Observing police style construction’, 2002; Wong,
1997,
1996).
Issues of police abuse of power and dereliction of duties were brought to the fore
by
the Sun Zhigang and
Li
Siyi
cases. Sun Zhigang, a university graduate, fashion
designer and migrant worker, was detained
by
the police on March
17,
2003,
for
failing to produce a residence permit in the Tianhe district of Guangzhou. He was
beaten to death while in custody three days later. The police initially attempted to
cover the incident up but were later forced to admit to wrongdoing as
a
result of
public pressure
(Li,
2003).
The incident galvanised the nation and resulted
in
12
state employees being found guilty of beating Sun Zhigang to death
by
the
Guangzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court (Sun Zhigang’s brutal killers
sentenced,
2003).
It
also led to the abolition of the ‘Measures for Internment and
Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars’ (1982)
by
the State Council (Tragedy
spurs end,
2003).
In the
Li
Siyi
case,
Li
Guifang, a drug addict, was arrested June
4,
2003,
in Jintan County,
10
km from her residence in the Qingbaijiang district of
Chengdu, for stealing. Because she was a drug addict she was sent to rehabilitation
by
law.
Li
begged the police to allow her to take care of her 3-year-old daughter
(Li
Siyi)
at home before her detention, but to no avail. The daughter was found dead
of starvation
17
days later (China police leave child to starve,
2003).
The case
caused a national uproar.
Police corruption and abuse breed public resentment and contempt (What
should police image,
2002;
Police image in art,
2002)
and in time lead to passive
nonsupport and active resistance (Observing police practice,
2002).
The
most
notable expressions of public discontent are peasant mass riots (Cu, 2000; Dai,
2000; Han, 2001). The public has also increasingly called police legitimacy into
question and the potential decline in public support has caught the attention of the
police. For example, on November 30,
1995,
the
Renmin
Gongan
Bao
(RMGAB;
People’s Public Security Post)
devoted a full page of public discourse on
jingcha
qwlnwei
(police authority) with contributions from various police authors discussing
problems, issues and remedies to a growing police legitimacy crisis. In
1996
the
police political leadership also held a conference entitled ‘Jingcha zhifa quanwei
yanjiu taolunhui zongshu’
(A
summary of a conference on police law enforcement
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