Tipping the Scales: New Chinese Directive Requires Lawyers to Pledge Loyalty to the Communist Party

There was a time, in the ‘90s, when the Chinese Communist Party at least talked the talk of legal reform and moving toward genuine rule of law. International lawyers and other experts came in to work with Chinese courts. True, those courts kept handing down long sentences to political critics and kept having off-stage Party officials make the real decisions in political cases while the judges sat in court as window-dressing – but they kept saying they wanted to strengthen rule of law.

The talk has changed of late. Propaganda Chief Li Changchun said a couple of years back that both China’s courts and its media should serve the interests of the Communist Party.

And today, March 21st, the Party moved to make that mandatory. The front page of the Legal Daily included a directive from the Ministry of Justice saying that Chinese lawyers will be required to take a pledge of loyalty to the Communist Party at a formal ceremony, within three months of getting their license to practice law.

The pledge goes like this (thanks to @Siweiluozi for the translation):

I volunteer to become a practicing lawyer of the People’s Republic of China and promise to faithfully perform the sacred duties of a socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics legal worker (中国特色社会主义法律工作者); to be faithful to the motherland and the people; to uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system; to safeguard the dignity of the constitution and the law; to practice on behalf of the people; to be diligent, professional, honest, and corruption-free; to protect the legitimate rights and interests of clients, the correct implementation of the law, and social fairness and justice; and diligently strive for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics!

The Ministry of Justice said on its website that the oath was needed to “firmly establish among the vast circle of lawyers faith in socialism with Chinese characteristics … and effectively improve the quality of lawyers’ political ideology.”

Not surprisingly, some Chinese lawyers are indignant. Reuters interviewed prominent human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping, who said the oath will hurt the development of China’s legal system. Reuters quoted him as saying, “I think it’s inappropriate. As a lawyer, you should only pay attention to the law and be faithful to your client.”

Mo is one of China’s cannier human rights lawyers, one who has managed to take on prominent and controversial cases without being detained or disappeared, as so many of his civil rights-minded colleagues have been.

A mostly younger generation of idealistic lawyers had banded together over the past decade in the “weiquan” – or civil rights – movement, taking up cases that defended rights guaranteed under China’s constitution, but ignored or flouted in court when the Party felt challenged or threatened.

They were tolerated for a time. But then they started being abducted by Party goons, taken to undisclosed locations and beaten, tortured, and threatened. Last year, in the wake of Communist Party jitters over the Arab Spring, dozens disappeared. When they were released, weeks or months later, several said they had been tortured, and many are now far less outspoken than they once were. And the Party remains vigilant, in this stretch before an autumn transfer of power to a new generation of leaders.

Before all that, one of the civil rights lawyers told me: “No one can prevent democratic elements from rising up in China. There are more and more human rights lawyers and activists. There are more and more intellectuals want to living in truth … Chinese people must realize that we have to change our political system. And what’s more, I think some Communist Party members or some government officials are about to change. The power of civil society is stronger and stronger. And in the future, I think the government has to hold a dialogue with civil society. And I think in the near future, we can see a free and democratic China. I believe so.”

With the Ministry of Justice’s new directive, that ‘near future’ just got pushed a little further away.

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