New York Times' Error? Li Datong & Bingdian

A NYT article on February 9 titled "Despite Web Crackdown, Prevailing Winds Are Free" said:

... Editors, like Li Datong of a recently closed Beijing newspaper supplement, Bing Dian, officially owned by the Communist Party Youth League, have begun to use the courts to challenge government efforts to silence them ... (emphasis added)

Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao (February 7) quoted Li Datong as saying that he, in the capacity of a party member, had lodged a formal complaint to the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection (中央纪律检查委员会) against the officials of the Central Propaganda Department. The Central Commission is an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, not a court. It is also difficult to see how a Central Propaganda Department's decision could be judicially reviewable in China.

Related blog posts:
Despite Web Crackdown, Prevailing Winds Are Free by Howard French
ESWN's translation of Ming Pao's report
Li Datong's open letter (CN) / ESWN's translation of Li Datong's open letter

Comments

[Tom - Daai Tou Laam]

The Central Commission may not be part of the official judiciary, but the judiciary has no power to oversee the discipline of Party members. That role of "procuratorate/judiciary" within the Party is reserved for the Central Commission for Discipline and Inspection.

So calling it a court may not be technically incorrect, but how much space can you provide to explain the twin systems for prosecution/trial on the mainland that are allegedly "separate but equal"?

[Letters from China]

The fact that the Chinese courts are toothless is exactly the reason why I take issue with the New York Times: if Li Datong were to take the Freezing Point dispute to a Chinese court I venture to say it would have been historic. Alas, that is not the case. I am not convinced that the lack of space is a justification for confusing a party organ and the judiciary. Would it not be rather absurd for a Chinese newspaper to substitute "UK's People's Political Consultative Conference" for the House of Lords? There are just too many political institutions in China with no western equivalent and any casual "analogy" could be appallingly misleading.

[Tom - Daai Tou Laam]

LoC, it's not that the Chinese courts are toothless but rather a matter of judicial jurisdiction.

The Commission is more akin to the Labour Party's internal disciplinary group, with the caveat that the Labour Party in this case has one party rule and that Labour Party cadres can't be touched by the regular justice system. Not just a matter of being toothless, but more a matter of judicial jurisdiction.

And I'd love to see a whole article in the NYTimes discussing the "separate but equal" twin justice system that keeps cadres' corruption from getting the same procedural justice as a banker's corruption.

I don't think the CCP can really handle cadre corruption and political/factional vendettas until it gets rid of the Commission as a separate entity and passes all of this over to an independent Procuratorate and Judiciary. That and starts to consider the Constitution as a base for the law/judiciary instead of just a PR operation.

[Letters from China]

But I can't imagine how can the Bingdian case be caught by any national law (except Article 35 of the Constitution which provides that "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press ..." Sadly the Constitution is not even qualified to be a "paper tiger")? According to the party constitution, the Communist Youth League (which published Bingdian) is led by the Party and Li Datong is actually making a complaint against the Propaganda Department, a party organ. So even if China were not a "bi-judicial" legal system, a court could have hardly intervened.

Back to square one, NYT's substitution of the Discipline and Inspection Commission for courts is in my opinion plainly wrong (technically and conceptually). The only reason I included a question mark in the title was that I did not know whether Howard French knew something that Hong Kong Chinese media didn't. It seems unlikely.