the black China hand

Last week, China’s justice minister gave a speech saying that lawyers should above all obey the Communist Party and help foster a harmonious society. To improve discipline, the minister said, all law firms in the country would be sent party liaisons to “guide their work.”

I heard a whisper of this recently from an old lawyer friend in China and then saw some more chatter about it on various China law serv-lists. The implications though are tremendous. If lawyers are to be relegated to another means of control for the Communist Party then any hope that they will be an engine of progress and reform is seriously in doubt. Moreover, all the hard work, time and money that civil society groups have put into China are now seriously at risk. I mean we all know that in China there are simply no guarantees but for a while now it sure looked that at least in terms of legal reform, things might have changed for the better.

Activist’s Detention Shakes China’s Rights Movement.