Organizer: Murray Scot Tanner, Western Michigan University
Chair: James Feinerman, Georgetown University Discussant: Kenneth Lieberthal,
University of Michigan
The panel papers examine China's organizational and policy dilemmas in coping with its growing social order crisis. In particular, they focus on the problems in China's Public Security system-probably the least well-known sector of the Chinese system. One of the panel's real strengths is that it brings together scholars from a wide variety of professional backgrounds (including political science, military studies, criminal justice administration, law, and human rights monitoring), each with their own unique access to this still largely closed bureaucratic sector, to help us better understand Chinese public security, policing and criminal procedure.
Over the past fifteen years, China has seen an explosion of serious social order problems which, though common to many rapidly developing countries, were largely suppressed during the Maoist era. These include: a rapidly growing violent crime rate (e.g. murder, rape, armed robbery, etc.); a transient or "floating" population which is now larger than all but a handful of countries in the world; trafficking in illegal drugs and armaments; organization of small private or quasi-legal "armies" and security forces; small-scale peasant rebellions; and ethnic and regional unrest.
Coinciding as they do with both the post-Deng succession and the collapse of European Leninism, these social order problems raise the most serious challenges to the capacity of China's weakening central government. How, for example, should China's government-which historically faced a largely non-mobile, cellular society (work unit-, neighborhood- and village-based), and could rely upon "campaign tactics,"-respond to the new challenges of a society which is ever more mobile and open? The current "strike hard" (yanda) anti-crime campaign, reminiscent of similar campaigns in the early 1950s and 1983-84, shows that the keepers of Chinese social order are far from arriving at innovative solutions for these new problems. How should the leadership cope with the problem of massive police corruption-an issue they have thus far been unwilling to face squarely? Organizationally, China's social order crisis and succession struggle have reawakened a battle (joined repeatedly since 1949) between the People's Liberation Army and the Public Security system over their respective roles in maintaining domestic social order, and their control over the rapidly growing paramilitary People's Armed Police forces. For democracy activists and legal and political scholars, China's social order crisis raises even thornier dilemmas: the "rule of law" and "democratization" cannot grow in a society wracked by crime, violence, corruption and ethnic unrest. But China's historic solutions to social order problems invariably provide the enemies of "rule of law" and "democratization" with a pretext for cracking down on political reformers even as they suppress common crime.
The authors address these questions from several viewpoints. Scot Tanner's paper asks how China's top leaders and organizational specialists charged with security administration perceive their social order problems, and what general strategies or competing "policy packages" they are advocating for coping with it. Richard Ward draws on his more than ten years of extensive consultation with officials in the Ministries of Public Security and Justice to examine how China's "policing styles" have evolved in response to the new challenges of the reform era. Michael Swaine and James Mulvenon, military specialists from the Rand Corporation, examine the recent rapid growth of the People's Armed Police and battle for control over this nearly million-strong paramilitary force during the succession struggle. Louisa Coan draws on her human rights monitoring experience to examine the struggle to build the "rule of law" in China by tightening up the Criminal Procedure Code and restricting the notoriously broad discretionary powers of the Public Security Bureaus. She also examines the impact the recent anti-crime campaign has had on these efforts. The chairman and discussant possess extensive experience in these areas-James Feinerman in the areas of Chinese law, criminal procedure, and human rights; and Kenneth Lieberthal in the areas of leadership and bureaucratic politics and the organization and history of Chinese civilian coercive, intelligence, and military apparatuses.
China's Post-Deng Social Order Challenges: Competing Leadership and Bureaucratic
Views
Murray Scot Tanner, Western Michigan University
This paper examines how China's current top leaders who have responsibility for overseeing public security affairs (for example, Qiao Shi, Ren Jianxin, Jiang Zemin, military leaders and others) and the leadership of the Public Security system view China's current social order crisis. What do they see as the greatest threats to China's social order, and from whence do they believe these threats arise? What, in particular, do they see as the relationship between China's economic reforms and open door policy and the current social order problems? What are the major competing "diagnoses" of the problem and "policy prescriptions" for dealing with it? How are debates over social order interwoven with the power struggles to succeed Deng Xiaoping, and what impact might these struggles have on China's ability to cope with its social order problems. In part, this paper is designed to complement several recent scholarly articles on competing leadership and organizational policy packages which focus predominantly on economic issues and do not address social order/internal security issues. For data, this paper relies upon several internal circulation leadership speeches, policy documents, and scholarly articles, as well as Chinese, Hong Kong, and Western press sources, and a very limited number of discussions with Chinese officials familiar with public security affairs.
The People's Police: Law and Order in China
Richard Ward, University of Illinois, Chicago
Since the beginning of the reform era, the role of the police (Public Security) in the People's Republic of China has changed dramatically. From a centrally controlled, dogmatic approach has emerged a number of different "styles" of policing which vary greatly from city to city. This paper explores the historical development of public security in the PRC from independence to the present, and the recent evolution toward new approaches to law and order. Data are drawn in part from the author's extensive contacts with Chinese Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Public Security officials over the past decade, and from contacts with faculty and students during two periods spent lecturing at China's Public Security University and the East China University of Politics and Law.
The Chinese People's Armed Police: The "Militarization" of the Police,
and the "Police-ization" of the Military
Michael Swaine, Rand Corporation; James Mulvenon, UCLA and Rand Corporation
The Chinese People's Armed Police (PAP) perform a wide variety of security duties, including the maintenance of domestic order, protection of key civil and government offices, border protection, and the general enforcement of Chinese law. The organization was formed in 1983 from the merging of former People's Liberation Army (PLA) internal defence divisions with armed police, border defence police, and fire brigades, and was placed under the formal control of the state public security apparatus (The Ministry of Public Security). Although it was widely believed that the MPS shared dual control of the PAP with the Chinese military, the PAP was recently placed under the control of the leading Central Military Commission (CMC). There are a variety of possible explanations for this change, involving issues related to the impending post-Deng succession, civil-military relations, and leadership politics within the Party and armed forces. Additionally, this shift has serious implications for the maintenance of social order in China. In particular, it raises debates of the potential "militarization" of the PAP's social control role, as well as the "police-ization" of the PLA. This paper will explore the changing role and authority structure of the PAP, with special emphasis on the relationship between its position within the Chinese military hierarchy and its potential use in situations of social disorder.
The Changing Role of the Public Security Bureau Under the New Criminal Procedure
Law
Louisa Coan, National Endowment for Democracy
While the revised Criminal Procedure Law slated to come into effect January 1, 1997 promises significant changes in courtroom procedure, admissibility of confessions produced under torture, allowability of detention without charge and the basic presumption of innocence, it remains to be seen how well the Public Security system will be able to adjust its actual behavior. Moreover, the current "strike hard" anti-crime campaign creates an environment highly unconducive to the new law's implementation. This paper examines the changes required by the new law, as well as the adequacy of the various Implementing Regulations issued by the Procuracy and the Ministry of Public Security. The paper also examines early reports on several cases of the law's implementation in order to assess the likelihood of fundamental changes in the roles and behaviour of Public Security Bureaus, and the impact on civil rights protections in China.