The CCP is keen to promote stability both to overseas investors and it’s own people. Chinese people want somewhere nice and safe to live, and it's useful to compare the way things are now, to there way things were then for propaganda purposes. Foreign companies need to be reassured that their Chinese headquarters aren't going to looted and set on fire in six months time. Foreigners have more opportunities to up sticks and leave should their perception of their own safety in a foreign country change.
While routinely using broad interpretations of the "subverting the state" to silence critics and other annoyances, China has perfectly straightforward laws on it’s books to make the country work. The problem comes when bizarre, self-serving laws are passed that don’t seem to make any sense. In addition to the normal laws that we have to deal with on a regular basis, some of the more recent additions to the law canon raise a few eyebrows:
- In response to the elderly father who was left outside the family home in freezing weather conditions a new rule was passed that set out to punish children who don’t visit their parents enough. Almost the moment that the law was ratified, a 77-year old woman in Wuxi sued her own daughter for neglect.
- When a number of high profile cases of “good samaritans” were sued by the very people they were trying to help, the government passed down a new dictum that offered legal protection for kind hearted souls.
- Following an unusually high number of stabbings, both in the capital and other cities, a law was rushed through making the sale of knives illegal - no one bothered to check that selling such weapons was already illegal, it’s just that no one bothered to enforce it.
- At the time of writing, a first draft of the “National Reading Promotion Regulations”, an effort to encourage reading, is being thrashed out.
- To promote tourism in the south of China, civil servants were legally required to learn at minimum of 300 sentences in English, and 100 more in four other languages.
- The idea was a little better than the one that some bright spark had in Guizhou. In order to massage the tourist figures at a local ruin, state employees were told to visits in their droves, not realizing that there would be no time left for doing any actual work if everyone took a day trip to the ancient site.
- Children can’t escape the long arm of the law either, at least in school. Students were forced to salute every car they saw on their way to and from school every day. While the law has been ostensibly passed to try to keep children safe on the mountain roads, no one has through to erect a sign telling drivers to be aware that there might be children on the road.
- Fearful that high school students in Chengdu would give in to their animal instincts, male and female students were ordered to keep a certain distance apart from each other.
The problem that this creates is that no really know what's legal and what's illegal. China like's creating laws, because they're an easy answer to a complex problem. No one really likes to admit that the eldery are abandoned by their adult children, and people don't like reading about stabbings and violent attacks. Enacting a law to make the whole thing disappear is much more preferable to actually doing something at a more grassroots level to improve public safety and the welfare of the less well off.
The passing of laws may be done with the best of intentions, but the micromanaging of people’s lives, and trying to find someone guilty of not visiting an elderly relative is impossible to determine without descending into a situation where it’s one person’s word against another. The selective enforcement against those deemed to be troublemakers harkens back to the days under the tyrannical Mao, an image that China now seems quite keen to distance itself from.
The idea of “face” contributes hugely to the problem. People don’t want other people to lose face in public by telling them what they should or shouldn’t do. China has battled with it's smoking problem for a good few years now, suffering from disastrously high lung cancer rates and other skyrocketing smoking related disease, a ban on smoking in public places has technically been written into the law of the land. There are places where it’s not a good idea not to smoke - on a subway, in subway bathrooms, nearly highly flammable materials, etc, but no one will risk embarrassing another by reminding him that he can’t smoke in a certain place. Thus, while there are laws, fines and no smoking signs everywhere, people still light up their cigarettes without a second thought.
Fond as China is of passing stupid laws (and then quickly rescinding them when they don't prove popular) could be spun out as the way the Chinese lawmakers listen to the people and "consult public opinion". What, in fact really happens, is that people tend to ignore laws that they believe to be stupid, and then start to ignore all laws, always managing to find a reason why the law doesn't apply to them. It's easier, faster and more profitable to hire someone without the proper background checks, especially in the culture of profit that currently exists. The law can be dealt with at a later date, once you've made your millions.
The bullying tactics of the much hated chengguan, the public security officers who, break more laws enforcing it that the people they certainly don't inspire much public trust in the authorities. With so much rampant corruption, and flagrant abuse of the legal system, it's easy to understand why people don't have confidence in the legal system as it is - until a law is passed forcing people to have confidence in it, that is.
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