China Ready to Drop ‘Counterrevolution’ Laws, in a Manner of Speaking

When the Communist victory was still fresh and relatively pure in the war-weary land of China, about the most serious charge that could be made against someone was that they were “counterrevolutionary.”

But nearly 50 years after the Communists swept into power full of revolutionary righteousness, lawmakers here say they are prepared to strike from the books all “counterrevolutionary” crimes--the same laws used over the decades to prosecute and jail thousands of political prisoners.

A standing committee of the National People’s Congress has made the recommendation and, if the Congress agrees at its next full session in March, some of China’s most onerous and capricious laws will cease to exist.

The proposed changes in the criminal code are part of a general reform of China’s laws by the National People’s Congress under the leadership of its progressive and ambitious chairman, Qiao Shi. They follow sweeping changes in the country’s criminal procedure laws, which take effect today.

When they were announced, the criminal procedure reforms won couched praise from some of the Beijing regime’s harshest critics.

“The most positive changes,” said a spokesman for Human Rights Watch/Asia in New York, “are a move toward acknowledgment of the principle of presumption of innocence; improved access of the accused to legal counsel; more stringent limits on time in detention before formal arrest; limits on the power of public security bureaus to act without supervision; and a de jure change in application of the death penalty.”

Likewise, international legal scholars, long critical of China’s abuse of the ideologically based laws to jail political prisoners, cautiously welcome the proposed changes in the counterrevolutionary statutes--some of the oldest laws on the books--as a step in the right direction. If enacted, these changes are likely to take effect Jan. 1, 1998.

“Any change moving away from revolution to a more normal, rational approach is welcome,” said Byron Weng, who teaches courses in government and law at Chinese University in Hong Kong. “It makes revolution less sacrosanct.”

But some human rights activists, claiming that at least 3,000 people convicted of counterrevolutionary crimes remain in prisons, dismiss the reform as a mostly cynical public relations gesture by the government as it continues to tighten screws on China’s beleaguered dissident community.

Xiao Qiang, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights in China organization, noted that most of the political crimes covered under the old counterrevolutionary statutes are now under the rubric “jeopardizing state security.”

Indeed, the recent prosecution and imprisonment of internationally celebrated dissidents, longtime democracy champion Wei Jingsheng and 1989 student leader Wang Dan, were on charges of “conspiracy to subvert the government.”

“The change of name is nothing more than old wine in a new bottle,” Xiao said. “No matter what they choose to call it, it is clear that the Chinese authorities have been using legislation as a weapon against grass-roots human rights and democracy activists with increasing frequency in recent years.”

Under China’s current criminal code, counterrevolutionary crimes are defined as “acts endangering the People’s Republic of China committed with the goal of overthrowing the political power of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system.”

Among the crimes covered under the old law were acts ranging from “practicing feudal superstition” to hijacking airplanes and streetcars.

Under the proposed changes, most of the same acts would be covered under an array of criminal and administrative laws.

Qi Shigui, director of the Shanghai People’s Congress and one of the members of the committee that proposed the changes, recently told the official New China News Agency that it will “not only achieve the purpose of consolidating state power but also [help] combat such crimes more forcefully.”

How the changes in China’s criminal statutes are received depends--as does much of what passes for reform in contemporary China--on how willing the observer is to accept the incremental, glacial movement toward the establishment of a civil society here.

The most positive spin from foreign analysts is that while China’s laws continue to be used as instruments of state suppression, just having them on the books is a positive step that may someday result in more permanent reform.

“Many in China recognize the importance of developing a more predictable, law-based system,” said University of Michigan political science professor Kenneth Lieberthal, an expert on China’s government. “The proposed measure, while likely more symbolic than substantive, moves a small step in the right direction.”

Some view the legal reforms as a victory in the ongoing succession struggle for National People’s Congress Chairman Qiao, the former secret police chief who is viewed as the most progressive of China’s potential successors to the ailing 92-year-old patriarch Deng Xiaoping.

Others, looking forward to the return of Hong Kong to China’s sovereignty in July, see the reforms as an attempt to bring the mainland’s laws more in conformance with international principles already firmly established in the British colony.

In its analysis of the proposed changes, the influential Legal Daily newspaper in Beijing seemed to reflect the current thinking of China’s leadership when it applauded the proposed changes as “concrete stipulations to replace some regulations that were originally rather vague or principle-based.”

Whatever the view, the elimination of counterrevolutionary statutes will mark a historic change as China continues to move away from the founding principles of its revolution.

In fact, Communist China’s first criminal laws, issued in 1951, were “Regulations for Punishing Counterrevolutionaries and Regulations for Punishing Corruption.”

One of the early cases of counterrevolutionary prosecution involved charges against the author and editor Hu Feng. Hu, a member of the Communist Party and friend of the famed writer Lu Xun, wrote articles against party control of art and literature.

In one of his essays, Hu attacked the use of Marxism to judge art as “crude sociology.”

Condemned in a mass campaign instituted by the party leadership, which encouraged struggle sessions against “Hu Fengism,” Hu was convicted during a secret trial in 1956 and--except for a brief parole--locked away in prison until 1979.

The use of counterrevolutionary statutes fell from favor after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when even senior leader Deng was denounced publicly as a “capitalist roader” and “counterrevolutionary.”

But they were revived again in 1989 to prosecute and jail thousands of mostly young people who participated in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

As late as 1994 a senior prison official told The Times that 2,679 people remained in prison charged with “counterrevolution.” But he said the number had dropped from more than 5,000 at the end of the 1989 student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Human Rights in China claims that as many as 3,600 inmates are still serving sentences under the counterrevolutionary statutes.

Human Rights Executive Director Xiao challenged China’s officials to prove their sincerity in abolishing “counterrevolutionary” crimes by reviewing these cases.

“If this change in name actually means real change of content,” Xiao said, “then all those who are currently being held for ‘counterrevolution’ should have their cases reexamined and be released accordingly.”