Justice in China

A day in court

The troubling fate of a geologist

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Readers' comments



As long as there is no separation of powers in China, and Judiciary and Legislature keep being mere branches of the Executive, Rule of Law and Justice will be but a joke, innocent will keep being punished for political motives and corruption will be as rampant as always. But Chinese leaders seem to prefer to hold to their throne no matter what.


The Fascist State takes the view if you are one of its sons and you work for a foreign power against the the financial, political or military interests of the Fascist Homeland then you are a traitor pure and simple. Which part of that don't you understand???.

Chinese from HK

So just tell all those overseas Chinese, do not think you are superior after you get a foreign passport and go back to China for business. Better stay in the civilised world as a taxi driver or whatever rather than going back.



How do you know Mr. Xue is "innocent"? How do you know he acquired the database in legitimate means? Do you mean anyone with an American passport is "innocent"? How much do you know about this case except to recycle the biased view of the Economist?

If China catches a US spy, then the Chinese human right and judiciary procedure has problem. If the US catches a Chinese spy, then China is "acting irreponsibly" and is "stealing secret from the West". What logic is that?


Law@HK, everybody is innocent until proven otherwise. Given China's deeply flawed and politicized judiciary, we can always have reasonable doubts about the culpability of defendants in cases such as this one. China, simply, doesn't enjoy Rule of Law.


"everybody is innocent until proven otherwise"
Yes - I agree. But do China need to prove this to the Americans according to the American procedure? Chinese courts have their own procedure that is different to the America's, but does it mean that the procedure is not valid?

As for rule of law in general, the Chinese government is working hard to improve, if you care to read about what is happening in China from channels other than the Economist. Improving rule of law, however, costs resources. Having qualified lawyers to debate in every fine details in each case is not the best use of resources as of today. But as China gets richer, things will improve gradually.


Law@HK, Xue Feng reportedly obtained the database from the internet in 2003 (see Page 2 of the Global Times article 'Revoking of sentence 'unlikely' for US spy'). I appreciate your skepticism, but think your argument is simply too simplistic (if you want to point fingers at similar cases in the states, look at the Thomas Drake case).

According to Chinese law (note not adopted until well after the incident and vaguely worded at best), he is guilty. What should be the focus of a healthy discussion is: first, what constitutes a "state secret" (which is inevitably blurry due to SOEs in China); second, how did the information originally end up on the internet; and lastly, what type of message does this send to trade policy researchers and consultancies working in China...


Law@HK, I agree with you that setting up a functional judiciary takes a lot of dough. However, resources are not the only factor here. Chinese leaders are obviously wary of granting the kind of power and independence judges enjoy in countries with true Rule of Law. That would mean that most of them could lose their jobs or even end up behind bars for corruption and other misdeeds. Currently, if a Chinese high officer is jailed or whacked, it's normally because of political reasons: scapegoats or victims of power-struggle intrigues (or both).

I'm not saying China is not improving in this field, but they are clearly not in a hurry.

Luci Sandor

A database of oil resources could only be public. The only two conditions I know that turn a data collection operation into espionages are: flow has to be eastwards; and it is a NYT article that real spies are after.

I feel sorry for Mr. Xue, real or false spy. Unlike Russians and Westerners (who talk it but don't mean it), the Chinese are the only ones who would still not waste time on negotiations with the supposed enemy. Many of their rulers still see people as expendable "resources". There will be no Vienna prisoner exchange for him.


@Luci Sandor
Have you seen that databse? If not, how can you know that it contains public information? If it is public and is available on the internet, why is IHS paying a large sum for it?

I agree that you probably want to have more details about the case. However, the Economist does not mention those details does not mean those details have not been considered in the Chinese court.

Who says rule of law will automatically cause politicans "end up behind bars for corruption"? Just look at the US. The "rule of law" there legalise corruption in the name of lobbying and freedom of political donation.

Luci Sandor

@ Law@HK:

You see, my first paragraph was actually delimited by sarcasm marks, "<" sarcasm ">" and "<" end of sarcasm ">". Unfortunately, the comments software caught that and censored my marks. (The lower-than and greater-than signs are used on the internet to mark text in bold, larger fonts etc., so it makes sense to restrict them here.) I didn't bother repeating the sarcasm warning on a second post, because I thought it should be inescapable. (Are real spies after NYT articles? Or are the NYT articles rather a target for the 10 Russian amateurs caught last week?)

I have no idea whether the database is public. It might not even matter, since the aforementioned Russian agents were found guilty of something anyway. If the Chinese also have a law forbidding work for foreigners without registration, similar to the American law the Russians broke, and if Mr. Xue broke that law... same tough nuts.

I don't think PRC rulers are troubled by such legal finesse. My irony is for The Economist naively pretending that there is a chance they might be, when even Western law systems sometimes proscribe thoughtcrimes, such as the one that Anna Chapman apparently committed.


As a geologist, he should know what he was doing. All oil companies regard their data as confidential. Ask any petro-guys you know to confirm this.


Law@HK, Rule of Law doesn't guarantee a 100% corruption-free system. But without Rule of Law, you have 100% chances of having rampant corruption, as it happens in China.

CT Lawson

The Chinese legal procedures are not valid according to international law.
Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is as follows:

But China's court hearings are neither public, fair or impartial.



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