On the morning of March 11, Supreme Court President Xiao Yang and Chief Procurator Han Zhubin made reports on the work of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate in 2001 respectively to the annual session of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, which was held March 5-15. The work reports summarized the achievements made by the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate in the previous year as well as remaining problems. That very afternoon, these two reports aroused heated panel discussions among members of the ninth National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, also in session on March 3-13 to exercise democratic supervision through proposals and criticisms.
All in all, the work reports by the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate were satisfying, said Yu Zupeng from the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party. “This year’s reports reflect exactly the current situation of the procuratorial and judicial work. Over the past year, the procuratorial and judicial organizations made great achievements in terms of improving their working style and efficiency of handling cases. During the campaign to crack down on crime and strengthen public safety launched last year, the procuratorial and judicial organizations meted out prompt and severe punishment in accordance with the law to those who committed serious crimes. In addition, the procuratorial and judicial organizations beefed up the combat against corruption and degeneration and scored outstanding successes in anti-corruption. All the above attainments ensured China’s reform and development, and greatly bettered people’s impressions on procurators and judicial officials.”
On the other hand, Yu Zupeng pointed out that in terms of judicial impartiality and administration of the country by law, the procuratorial and judicial organizations still could not meet the new requirements brought in by China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The reports by the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate admit undesirable phenomena harbored inside the judiciary system including the low quality of some policemen at the grassroots who occasionally commit unlawful acts, extort confessions by torture, and impose fines at random. Associating with criminals, some policemen tipped off suspects and shared with them information on procurators and on judicial officials’ actions. Also, other long-standing problems such as the issue of difficult implementations of decisions still call for immediate solution.
While expressing their satisfaction, most members of the CPPCC National Committee pointed out problems still remaining both in the reports and in the actual procuratorial and judicial work, and they expressed hope that the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate would attain yet better results in the future.
Also mentioned in the reports: “Some judges fell easy-prey to influence, deciding cases contrary to the law, discipline, and their own conscience; in some courts barriers to the enforcement of judgments in civil cases has not been alleviated yet.” Yang Zhenjiang, another member from the Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, pointed out that there were a lot of factors hindering courts and procuratorates from handling cases. However, no case or person has been exposed by either through procuratorial and judicial organizations or through the media. Exposing these cases is necessary to warn those who interfere with the law and to prevent those powerful people who use personal connections with procurators and judicial officials to disturb judicial investigation. For instance, in the recent case of the ex-director of a provincial tax bureau who bought his title, the person who sold him the post was not held accountable at all. In Yang’s opinion, compared with those who bought public posts, those who sold posts should be the more severely punished.
In addition, Yang offered a three-point proposal concerning the court’s future work.
A vertical system needs to be established in courts and procuratorates, otherwise courts and procuratorates cannot truly perform their supervisory function over government agencies.
The current situation in the public security sector needs to be improved. People have a lot of complaints about the public safety sector, such as poor quality of the police as well as the phenomena that the public security agencies have already become a sanctuary for some children of police who did not get admitted to college.
In regards to military personnel transferred to procuratorial and judicial work, according to Yang, proper arrangements should be made for these ex-servicemen based on their personal abilities. Assigning demobilized soldiers who are not qualified to courts and procuratorates at random will adversely affect the procuratorial and judicial work, especially when they are put into a position of leadership.
Zhang Yu from the China Democratic League said that according to the reports by the Supreme Court and Supreme Procuratorate, over the previous year 40,195 embezzlers and bribe-takers were put on file for investigation, which shows that the investigation and punishment on degenerates have been enhanced.
“Nonetheless, only 539 bribers were investigated and punished. Generally speaking, those who bribe and those who take bribes are closely related to each other. It is not possible for a bribe-taker to take only one person’s bribe. If so, compared with bribe-takers, more bribers should be punished. Then how to explain the great difference between the number of bribees and of bribers who were already sentenced? Is the blow at bribery not heavy enough? Why not beef up the fight against bribery? All bribers try to corrupt governmental officials for their personal gain at the expense of national interest. Thus, bribe-giving is a crime greater than bribe-taking. Unfortunately, the present punishment on bribers is too light. Bribers should be investigated and punished in each case. Only dealing with both bribe-taking and bribe-giving can strike at the root of corruption.”
Lei Hengshan, also from the China Democratic League, noticed the difference in some figures between the two reports. For instance, the Supreme Court’s report states: “The courts of the whole country concluded the investigation of 21,098 appeals against initial sentences submitted by procuratorial agencies, of which 4,697 cases’ judgments were amended according to law since the causes of litigation were tenable, 7,440 cases’ original verdicts were affirmed, 1,055 appeals were withdrawn by procuratorial organizations, 1,538 cases were sent back for retrial due to new evidence or unclear facts in original judgments, and 6,368 cases were settled out of court by both litigants voluntarily.”
But according to the report by the Supreme Procuratorate: “Procuratorial agencies submitted 16,488 appeals in accordance with the law in 2001 and the courts concluded the investigation of 10,145 appealing cases, of which 5,377 cases’ initial verdicts were amended, and 900 cases were sent back for retrial after the cancellation of original judgments.”
Taking into account leftover cases in 2000, the discrepancy between the above two sets of figures is still very great, said Lei.
Han Dajian from the China Democratic League pinpointed the frequent references to the increase of crime rate “year by year” in the reports. “On the one hand, we must admit that the public safety agencies have increased investment and made progress in terms of maintaining public order. On the other hand, we need to ask the question why the number of criminal cases keeps on increasing under the circumstance of intensified public security.” She believes that insufficient prevention is the main cause of the paradox.
(By Zhang Yan, china.org.cn staff reporter, translated by Shao Da, March 25, 2002)
