Future depends on tests ahead

The Domestic Challenge. The rule of law and judicial independence are pillars of good governance everywhere because they protect the average person from abuse by the powerful and privileged - particularly from the kind of arbitrary exercise of authority seen during the Cultural Revolution as well as the pervasive corruption of the past decade when rapid growth hurled China into the top ranks of the global economy.

Singapore is a good example of how the rule of law strengthens the authority of the state, above all by cleaning up corruption.

Certainly, China is seeking to construct these foundational pillars on historical soil of a very different composition than that of the West. Just as the Middle Kingdom always ruled as a central power with tributaries instead of through geopolitical balance, so too the state in China has always been unitary and not characterized by a division of powers as in the modern West. The rise of civil society and the separation of powers in the West was the consequence of an historical conflict between religious and political authority that never occurred in China.

The urgent impulse to construct the “rule of law” in modern China instead came in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. When I sat down for an interview with Qiao Shi in 1997 during the time he was the head of the National People’s Congress, here is how he put it:

It was from the bitter experience of the Cultural Revolution that, by the end of the 1970s, we began to stress the need to improve the legal system and law, to maintain stability and continuity in this system of law and make it very authoritative.

According to the constitution of China, all power in the country belongs to the people, and the people exercise state power through the National People’s Congress (NPC) and local people’s congresses at various levels.

To ensure that the people are the real masters of the country, that state power is really in their hands, we must strengthen these institutions and give them full play.