Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself—And That’s (Usually) Enough
My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
—Franz Kafka
While tens of millions of brave souls challenge China’s Orwellian state each year, they represent but a medium-size drop of dissidence in a 1.4 billion population bucket. In fact, like those cowed journalists who succumb to self-censorship, the overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens assiduously toe the Party line.
Some Chinese citizens embrace civil obedience simply because the economic times have been good to them. However, the far bigger element in China’s docility equation is the raw stench of a gut-wrenching, sweat-stained fear. This fear begins with the total absence of nearly every freedom guaranteed in the U.S. Bill of Rights and ends in a system of injustice that would make Franz Kafka’s skin crawl. In China’s “Kafka on steroids” legal system, there are
No search warrants, protections against false arrest, or bail. Chinese authorities can knock down any doors to collect evidence and have extremely broad powers of arrest. Political and religious targets may be charged with anything ranging from revealing state secrets and subversion to trumped-up charges of common crimes such as blackmail or extortion. Most defendants taken into custody are denied bail, and many are put into “incommunicado detention,” with no notification to their family.
No adequate legal representation. Defense lawyers are subject to all manner of abuse and intimidation. They may be unlawfully detained, beaten, and/or disbarred. Under a catchall clause in the Chinese legal system, defense lawyers may also be arrested and charged if their client commits perjury, offers “false testimony,” or fabricates evidence; and prosecutors have a very broad definition of just what constitutes these offenses.
No presumed innocence. Like the officer in Franz Kafka’s book In the Penal Colony, “Guilt is never to be doubted.” In fact, as a bit of gallows humor, the term xian pan hou shen is used by citizens to describe China’s system of “verdict first, trial second.” Guilt is determined before the defendant’s trial by a prosecution committee. Perhaps not surprisingly, conviction rates hover above 99%. Appeals of guilty verdicts are successful less than half of 1% of the time.
No trial by jury, witnesses, or right to remain silent. During trials, defendants do not have the right to confront their accusers, and less than 5% of trials involve witnesses. There is no right to remain silent, no protection against double jeopardy, and very few rules of evidence to limit what can be introduced by the state to convict a defendant.
No protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Once someone is in a Chinese slammer, prison guards will continue to exert strong pressure if the person fails to acknowledge guilt. This is consistent with China’s legal dictum of “lenience for those who confess, severity for those who resist.”
In some cases, prison guard pressures are limited to denying the inmate the right to buy food from the outside, to make any phone calls, or be visited. In other cases, as documented by the United Nations, inmates are subjected to all manners of torture and abuse—from beatings, cigarette burns, and submersion in water or sewage to shackles, sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and being tied up in grossly twisted positions for extended periods.
No conviction necessary for incarceration. You don’t have to be convicted to wind up incarcerated. “House arrest” is one common control and punishment measure that is often applied to political dissidents, petitioners, or religious practitioners—as well as their families.
In a gambit that would make Big Nurse (of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest infamy) proud, the Chinese government also frequently uses its psychiatric hospitals to “reeducate” or brainwash dissidents. In these institutions, prisoner patients are given all manner of mind-altering medicines against their will and forcibly subjected to electric shock “therapy.” According to the U.S. State Department, prisoners are also “strapped to beds or other devices for days at a time, beaten, and denied food and use of toilet facilities.”
No repressive stone left unturned. The worst of China’s prisons that claim not to be prisons are China’s dreaded Reeducation Through Labor (RTL) camps. Individuals can be squirreled away for up to four years in an RTL camp, and they need not be formally charged or brought before a judge.
China’s RTL camps are part of a broader latticework of Soviet-style gulags known as laogai that house as many as 20 million Chinese prisoners of conscience. This ultra-cheap prison labor helps China’s mercantilist manufacturing machine do everything from farming, loading construction rock, and mining coal to producing finished goods such as toys and textiles.
Time is very hard in the laogai. Prisoners work nine to ten hours a day with only one day off every two weeks. They may work as many as 12 hours a day if timetables are not being met.
No protections against “capitalist” punishment. China executes more prisoners than any other country in the world. As recently as 2001, a prisoner would be shot in the back of the head, and his family would be billed for the cost of the bullet. Often, these executions were carried out in public venues such as sports stadiums to cheering mobs and broadcast on TV.
Today, with greater concern about its world image, China prefers more private executions using lethal injections. The use of lethal injections is not for humane considerations. Rather, one major reason for the switch from bullets is China’s headlong capitalist plunge into the organ-trafficking business.
As noted by Amnesty International, unlike a bullet, a lethal injection leaves the whole body intact, and organs, such as hearts, lungs, kidneys, and corneas, can “be extracted in a speedier and more effective way than if the prisoner is shot.” According to China’s own vice minister of health, the majority of organs used in transplants in China are extracted from executed prisoners.
As part of its highly efficient supply chain for its organ-trafficking business, China’s capital punishment entrepreneurs have even invested in a large fleet of “death mobiles.” These RV-size, rolling chambers of doom come equipped with police lights on the top and a complete medically staffed lethal injection facility. They are large enough to hold a prisoner, several guards, a judge, and an executioner. They typically park right outside a court to await the verdict and sentencing, and they can swiftly deliver fresh corpses or organs to transplant hospitals.