Chinese Government Structure and Court Cases

For example, in Confucianism, the government is designed around a ridged hierarchy. For a Confucian society to function properly, everyone must understand their rank and act accordingly. Citizens were required to put blind faith in and pledge unwavering loyalty to their superiors and government. In the same way, in an effort to improve the overall strength of society, the Communist Party of China (CPC) ranks their interests above the interests of their citizens. Given this superior mindset, the government feels duty bound and even righteous in their punishment of journalists whose writings may endangers the party’s continuation. Recently, French journalist, Ursula Gauthier, was forced to leave China after writing an investigative piece about a Muslim region in western China. From a western perspective, this banishment seems completely unjustified as openness to new and old knowledge is celebrated as is dissent, investigation, and inquiry. But, considering the CPC’s singular focus on their notion of societal good, this decision is understandable, if not valid. In

There are various differences and similarities between the United State and the People’s Republic of China, while comparing their constitution. The first and obvious difference in those two constitutions is the number of amendments or articles in each constitution. The United States has twenty-seven amendments on total, while China’s constitution is very specific and has one hundred thirty-eight articles on total. The United States is an individualism country, on the other hand China is a socialist country.

Bob Fu conveys clearly the inexorable control that Communist leaders in China have over their people. For example, after Fu and his friends participated in the Tiananmen Square protests, Fu was coerced, day in day out, to write a confession of his purported misdeeds against China and her people as a “counterrevolutionary” (79-82, 85, 87).

Legalism is an ancient Chinese philosophy of administration that believes that humans are more inclined to do wrong than right because they are motivated entirely by self-interest. Shi Huangdi was the founder of the Qin dynasty. After conquering the seven kingdoms in ancient China, he halted the Warring States Period and took the throne as the first emperor of the unified Chinese nation. He ruled on the basis of Legalism. To prevent criticism of his rule, Shi Huangdi ordered that all books that seemed to be useless or against him be burned. This included all poetry from the Chou dynasty and all books written by Confucian scholars. The only books from previous eras that Shi Huangdi let off were the practical ones about medicine and farming. Focusing on the issue of media censorship, the current Chinese government governs in a similar way to the way Qin Shi Huangdi once governed. China still blocks and monitor citizens access to several social media services and shuts down media entertainment programs during government events. While some may see this as an extreme form of censorship, we must consider the fact that several other countries have similar policies in place.

In both China and the United States, the judicial system is composed of courts that contain several different levels. However, there is a basic structural difference between the Chinese and American legal systems. In America, the three branches of government are supposed to be separate, so that the court system is supposed to be beyond party politics and partisan antics. This separate system of checks and balances does not exist in China. On the contrary, the judicial branch is not independent. It is meant as an extension of the government, and therefore of the single political party with any power in China. The distinction between American judicial independence and Chinese judicial dependence may be one of the most critical differences between the two systems because the American judicial branch is meant to act as a check and balance with the other systems, while China's three-part system has the same branches but lacks the same independence.

The Qin Dynasty is often criticized for having had an extremely harsh penal system. In the Transgressions of Qin by Sima Qian, the Qin emperor is described as “the leader of the world in violence and cruelty” who “bore a covetous and boorish heart” (Mair, Steinhardt, and Goldin, 2005, p. 157). Yet, although the Qin is depicted as having had an unreasonably harsh and extreme system, the legal system during Qin was fair in actuality. As much as Qin is criticized for a cruel system of penalizing, under Qin rule, people were tried justly in a fair legal system, with access to certain rights. The excavated bamboo strips with Qin law inscriptions provide insight into the Qin thoughts on punishment. They believed that when trying cases, “if it is possible to track down the words of a witness by means of documents, it is better to obtain facts from a person without flogging him. Flogging is inferior because where there is fear, the case fails” (Mair, Steinhardt, and Goldin, 2005, p. 149). This shows the government’s belief that inducing fear is not the ideal way of ruling the subjects. The laws regarding punishment also took into account people’s circumstances. For instance, “If the child is newborn and has strange marks on its body or is deformed, it is not a crime to kill it” (Mair, Steinhardt, and Goldin, 2005,

Chiu to “admit you are guilty” (351), a fake crime, the officers wants to be correct to support their god complexity’ to demonstrate the power and control the nation has given them. In the admitting the crime Mr. Chiu would succumbed to the powers of the corrupted police and ideology. The police is trying to prove their authority by disrupting and twisting justice. The regimen that once was seen to be powerful was now just corrupt individuals and systems in the eyes of the party member; Mr. Chiu. The Tiananmen Square massacre was in essence the doubt of the people on the party and fear of corruption that lead student to protest in Beijing, China in 1989; the protest was not taken lightly by the government, who send military personnel to get rid of the protesting students (Szczepanski). This opened the eyes of the author to understand the corruption and repression that the government had, especially the military personnel’s little remorse after the killings of Protestants and common

The article, “China to ‘Tighten Up’ on Illegally Obtained Evidence, Protect Criminal Suspects’ Rights”, was very interesting. It’s about all the ways China is trying to prevent injustice in the executive and judicial systems by protecting the rights of criminals before and after conviction. There are several ways in which efforts have been taken. One is the tightening of judicial procedures when it comes to what is and isn’t legal evidence and upholding the “innocent until proven guilty” policy in courts. Another effort being the installment of video recording equipment in detention facilities and interviewing rooms to prevent any acts of torture or illegal motives to gain evidence. Lastly, another action is the creation of China’s first anti-domestic violence law, clearly defining domestic violence as the physical or psychological abuse of anyone.

Another important point made by the author is, courts have stretched their impact over the official branch, with correspondingly affect controls. The present burdens of the national government have their foundations in decisions around established laws made long back. Hence, the likeliness of change is

Nonetheless, the popularization of the internet enables the Chinese to get in touch with the Western values. Thus, activism for human rights has appeared online. This essay will argue how online activism has influenced Chinese understandings of human rights; formed the attitude toward the authoritarian regime; and shaped the Chinese society. Two cases are selected namely 1) Shanxi black brick kiln slave scandal; 2) Lei Yang incident. At the same time, I will illustrate how the authority response to the two incidents which are positive and negative respectively. The positive is that the social welfare has been improved, while the negative is that the government tightened the cyber control.

Although young Muslims endure an abundance of hardships at school, Muslims face a wider variety of issues in the real world. The Supreme Court has made many rulings that would allow the government to help Muslims. Supreme Court Justice Kagan said, “the Constitution permits more active involvement in accommodating minority members” (“First Amendment…”). This means that the highest court in the nation has ruled governmental aid as constitutional, which proves the government has the authority to help disadvantaged minorities. Justice Rehnquist connects to Justice Kagan’s idea by not only stating “the Establishment Clause [does] not require government neutrality,” but he also said, “it did not prohibit the government from providing...aid to religion”

Without going into further details about British courts decisions, it suffices to recall that the House of Lords Committee finally decided that Pinochet had no criminal immunity and that his extradition was possible . Nonetheless, a political decision based on 'humanitarian grounds ' freed Pinochet, who returned to Chile when some legal proceedings had already initiated to investigate human rights violations occurred during both the coup and Pinochet’s mandate, and he was finally put into trial. Once again, external pressures were significant factors when promoting domestic

In the United States we use grand juries and/or preliminary hearings as a screening device to make sure there is enough evidence to go to trial, whereas in the People’s Republic of China, there is one person, called a Procurator, who screens cases5. This causes the decision to go to trial extremely unfair, because the standard of evidence in China is “sufficient” as opposed to American standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Also in the case of a grand jury, there has to be more than one person agreeing the case can go to trial, whereas in China, just one person decides whether a case is trial worthy. The largest difference between the two countries processes however, is not the use or lack thereof grand juries,

I am a Chinese warrior and noble who was interested in the path of Confucius. His teachings were about respect,values,loyalty,and kindness. In 246 B.C.E., Qin King Zheng comes to my house with a great military army and he was just thirteen year old young man. I was told that he was a ruthless person and followed the teachings of Legalism. However, I believe that he can fix the damage state that China is in. I ignore the people who oppose my choice. I hope by bringing the King Zheng to my land will help me gain his favor for a government spot and help bring prosperity to my people in China. In 221 B.C.E., King Zheng has conquered all of china with his vast army. He had his spies keep an eye on me and made me pay my taxes that was twice as

The government continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses in violation of internationally accepted terms. These abuses stemmed from the government's extremely limited tolerance of public unrest. The Constitution and laws provide for fundamental human rights however, these rights are often ignored in practice. Abuses included instances of extra-judicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process(Amnesty International. "China, violations of human rights). Prison conditions at most facilities remained very harsh. In many cases, especially in sensitive political cases, the judicial system denied criminal defendants basic legal safeguards and due process of the law, merely because authorities attached higher priorities to maintaining public order and suppressing political opposition than to enforcing the legal norms of the country (Amnesty International. "China, violations of human rights). The government infringed on citizens' privacy rights. The government