Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A982-W634

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A982-W634

Release Date: January 22, 2017

发布日：2017年1月22日

Topic: The Retrogression of the Legal System in China -- Wei Jingsheng

标题：法制历史的倒退 -- 魏京生

Original Language Version: Chinese (Chinese version at the end)

此号以中文为准（英文在前，中文在后）

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The Retrogression of the Legal System in China

-- Wei Jingsheng

Recently we heard about the most ridiculous thing in China, which is that Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan engaged in unity of the Communist Party and the governance of the regime. They took an approach almost exactly the same way as in Islamic fundamentalism: starting by aligning judicial laws with religion. As they unite these two together, the logical next step would be the unified leadership under the Communist Party, as what happened during the Cultural Revolution. This is what our friends in all circles both inside China and abroad are talking about as the retrogression and a return to Cultural Revolution in China.

What has been most criticized in the unification of the state and the religion during the European medieval times, is the religious courts. That is to treat religious doctrine as law, to determine people's life and death. Xi Jinping is clearly not smart enough to invent a set of religious theories; instead, he decided to use the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as his doctrinal theory, by merging the nominal Commission of Judicial Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party with the official judiciary commission of the country. With two brands of one organ, he realized his implementation of the unification of the state and the religion.

Corruption appeared even earlier than the bureaucratic system Chinese invented. It has been the problem causing social headache since the advent of government in Chinese history: namely the Xia Dynasty founded by the son of Yu the Great, who controlled the flood. Such corruption leads to the suffering of the people, the important reason for the ultimate decay of a society.

Since ancient times all societies have been against corruption. Especially after the establishment of bureaucracy anti-corruption agencies began to develop more and more complex rules, and became more and more tight. Although none of these agencies were very successful, there were some basic laws and principles to follow. One of the most important ones is that the monitoring and monitoring bodies themselves must be supervised and monitored as well. So anti-corruption agencies must overlap each other, to avoid areas that are absent from the supervision.

Why did the anti-corruption effort during ancient times have so many ups and downs, with such a poor effect? The basic reason is that although the supervision mechanism was quite perfect, even better than modern mechanisms, the bureaucracy itself was bounded into one, regardless of partisan. Mixed in the same officialdom and seeing each other often, it was inevitable that the officials protect each other and use each other.

Only modern democracy offers the possibility of effective anti-corruption. It divides the official circles into different parties, which allow them to compete with each other, with anti-corruption becoming an important element of competition. Politicians are all peers and know each other well. It is easy to deceive the outsider common people, but it is almost impossible to deceive the members of the opposite party, who are experts as well.

It sounds like it is designed to get the parties to fight, i.e., not very moral. But it can make the society benefit from it and avoid the power of corruption, which is very moral. Therefore, even though democratic systems are not particularly complex in their anti-corruption agencies, they still can suppress the corruption phenomenon to a minimum, almost eliminating it. This cannot be said of the large-scale deep corruption of an autocratic regime.

So although the democratic systems look chaotic, with quarrels during the election penetrating the sky, like the Chinese saying of "the fisherman benefited while the snipe and clam were fighting", the society and the people benefit from this competition. Why not? What is wrong in suppressing the headache of corruption? In fact, the most outstanding wisdom of the so-called wise rulers of ancient China was to divide officials into several factions -- the so-called "divide first, then rule". So even the emperor's courts systematically set up more than two prime ministers, in an effort to create political competition in order to avoid the monopoly of power which results in severe corruption.

As we examine the history, the prevalence of corruption in ancient China always started from the imbalance of power of these prime ministers, thus the corruption spread from top to bottom and increased daily until ultimately to be out of control completely.

China's current situation is exactly this fully comprehensive corruption, which is getting out of control. China's current political system is exactly a Caesaropapism type combining politics and religion into one, with a legal system out of control. In this situation, do we see the abolition of overlapping oversight mechanisms and the abolition of the oversight of the supervision body as anti-corruption or corruption? As long as we have a normal IQ, we can make the right judgment.

Since it is so simple a truth, why don't Xi Jinping, who tried to show the world how many books has he read, and Wang Qishan understand it? There is reason behind it. The reason for Xi Jinping is very simple. Just as we all criticized, he wants to engage in personal dictatorship. Thus he tries to concentrate powers from all the aspects. As the top commander of the Communist Party, Xi is not accustomed to seeing any power including judicial power, other than his power from the Communist Party.

As a result, Wang Qishan let Xi Jinping get what he wants and helped Xi to concentrate the most important judicial power - the power of supervising and monitoring the officials. Of course the reason is that the anti-corruption campaigning did not achieve the ideal result, because power was not concentrated, with mutual containment and thus result interference and so on. The conclusion was that it is necessary to concentrate the power of supervising the officials, thus to effectively combat the disobedient officials who are not part of the Xi-Wang fraction. Xi Jinping was delighted with this.

There is also another saying. Wang Qishan has achieved enough reputation which made him more respected than his boss Xi Jinping, which made Xi jealous and work to attempt to exclude Wang. This is why we heard the rumors in the previous couple of years about how Wang Qishan should retire this year, in accordance to the rule. During that couple of years, Xi Jinping put an emphasis on stressing "abiding by the rules", while Wang Qishan also publicly joked about retirement. But we all could tell that without Wang Qishan, Xi Jinping may not end his term gracefully.

It may not be excluded that Wang Qishan has given pressure privately to eventually force Xi Jinping to make concessions before the 19th Congress of the Communist Party. The concessions cannot only be given verbally; Wang will not accept lip service. So they simply had to reach a consensus: you have your dictatorship while I have mine, you grab all the political power of the Communist Party and the Chinese government, while I grab all the legal power. So the two sides reached the balance of power.

But this balance is temporary and also fragile. For Xi Jinping who wants to follow the footsteps of dictator Mao Zedong, who not only kept the leadership but also launched the Cultural Revolution during 1960's, not only does Xi need to stay as the chairman of the Communist Party, but also he needs to have people like Lin Biao to maintain the army, together with Minister Xie Fuzhi of Public Security who had the legal power.

Now Xi Jinping has lost legal power, which will make him unable to reach his ideal of becoming a new Mao Zedong. To achieve his ideal, Xi will compete for this legal power, and will have to have a showdown against Wang Qishan. These two will stage the Chinese reality show of "House of Cards" until one died politically. Yet Wang Qishan has long established his prestige through the political and legal power he has, and he will further cut the aliens and enhance his strength, so the final winner has yet to be determined.

As the international situation is not conducive to the Chinese Communist regime now, this fight will come even earlier. All of us can wait and watch this magnificent show.

To hear Mr. Wei Jingsheng's related commentary, please visit:

http://www.weijingsheng.org/RFA/RFA2017/WeiJS170111onLegalRetrogression.mp3

(Written on January 10, 2017 and recorded on January 11, 2017. Broadcasted by Radio Free Asia.)

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中文版

Wei Jingsheng Foundation News and Article Release Issue: A982-W634

魏京生基金会新闻与文章发布号：A982-W634

Release Date: January 22, 2017

发布日：2017年1月22日

Topic: The Retrogression of the Legal System in China -- Wei Jingsheng

标题：法制历史的倒退 -- 魏京生

Original Language Version: Chinese (Chinese version at the end)

此号以中文为准（英文在前，中文在后）

如有中文乱码问题，请与我们联系或访问:

http://www.weijingsheng.org/report/report2017/report2017-01/WeiJS170122onLegalRetrogressionA982-W634.htm

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法制历史的倒退

-- 魏京生

最近听到的最可笑的事情，就是习近平和王岐山搞的党政合一。和伊斯兰原教旨主义走的路子几乎一模一样：都是教法合一开始。先把司法与宗教合一，然后顺理成章就是文革时期的党的一元化领导了。这就是国内外各界朋友们正在议论的中国的倒退和文革化。

欧洲中世纪的政教合一，至今最受到人们诟病的，就是宗教法庭。也就是把宗教的教义当作法律，来决定人们的生死。习近平显然还没有聪明到能够发明一套宗教理论，但他决定把马列毛的理论当作他的理论，把名义上还是共产党的内部司法机关纪律检查委员会，与官方的司法机关监察委员会合并。两块牌子一个机关，实行了政教合一。

比中国人发明官僚制度还要早；自从有政府开始，也就是从治水的大禹之子建立夏朝开始，腐败就是让社会头疼的问题。这也是导致人民受苦受难，社会衰败最终灭亡的重要原因。

自古至今所有的社会都反对腐败，特别是建立官僚制度以后，反腐败的机构就开始发展得越来越复杂，越来越严密。虽然并不都很成功，但也找到了一些基本的规律和原则。其中最重要的一条，就是监督和监察的机构本身也必须受到监督和监察。所以反腐败的机构必须叠床架屋，互相重叠，避免有受监督的死角。

古代的反腐败为什么起起伏伏，效果不佳呢?根本的原因在于：虽然监督机制相当完善，甚至比现代的机制还要完善，但是官场本身浑然一体，不分党派。在同一个官场上混，抬头不见低头见，官官相护，彼此利用也就难免了。

只有现代民主制提供了有效反腐败的可能性。它把官场分成了不同的党派，让他们互相竞争，而反腐败成了竞争的重要内容。政治家们都是同行，彼此非常了解。想欺骗外行的老百姓很容易，想欺骗同样是内行的对立党派，就几乎是不可能的了。

听起来像是设计好了让他们鹬蚌相争，不太道德。但这可以让社会渔翁得利，避免了权力的腐败，十分道德。所以民主制没有特别复杂的反腐败机关，也能够把腐败现象压制在最低限度，或者几乎杜绝。这和专制政权的大规模深度腐败，不可同日而语。

所以别看民主制好像很乱，竞选吵架吵翻了天，可是鹬蚌相争渔翁得利，社会和老百姓在这种竞争之中得利，有什么不好呢？让人头疼的腐败被压制得抬不起头了，有什么不对吗？其实古代所谓的明君最大的明，就是把官员分成几派，所谓的分而治之。以至于制度性地设立两个以上的宰相，制造出政治竞争以便避免大权独揽造成的重度腐败。

考察历史，中国古代腐败盛行的时期，一律是从相权不平衡开始，从上到下层层腐败，日渐加重，最终走向全面失控。

中国现在的形势，正是全面腐败，走向失控。中国的政体，正是政教合一，法制失控。在这种形势下，取消监督机制的重叠，取消监督机构所受的监督，是反腐败呢，还是制造腐败？只要有正常的智商，都可以做出正确的判断。

既然是这么浅显的道理，为什么满世界晒书单，好像很有文化的习近平、王岐山就不懂呢？原来是有背后的原因。习近平的原因很简单，就像大家抨击的那样，想搞个人独裁，就从各个方面集中权力。他作为党的第一把手，不习惯看见党权以外的任何权力，司法权也不例外。

于是，王岐山顺水推舟，顺藤摸瓜，就帮助习近平集中了司法权里最重要的权力，监督、监察官员的权力。理由当然是反腐不理想，都因为权力不集中，互相牵制受干扰等等。结论就是要把对官员的监督权集中起来，才能够有效打击不听话的不是本帮派的官员。习近平听了偷着乐。

还有一种说法是王岐山功高震主，使得习近平心生疑忌，企图排挤。这就是前两年盛传的王岐山按照七上八下的规矩，应该在今年退休。那两年习近平还特别强调要守规矩，王岐山也公开笑谈退休生活。但大家也都看得出来；没有王岐山，习近平可能混不下去。

也不排除王岐山私下里给以压力，最终习近平不得不在十九次党代会前作出让步。让步不能只给口头上的让步，老王也不会接受口惠而实不致。所以干脆达成共识：你独裁我也要独裁，你党政大权一把抓，我也要政法大权一把抓。如此双方就达到了权力的平衡。

但这个平衡是暂时且脆弱的。习近平要想当毛泽东二世，就要像毛泽东在六十年代不仅仅维持不倒台还可以发动文革那样，不仅有党的主席，还有军队的林彪，再加上政法大权的公安部长谢富治。

现在习近平失去了政法大权，就不能够达到他的毛泽东二世的理想。欲达到理想就要争夺政法大权，就要和王岐山摊牌。俩人就会上演纸牌屋，直到你死我活。而王岐山早已利用政法大权树立了威望，进一步削剪异己扩充实力，最终鹿死谁手还不一定。

在国际形势不利于中共的情况下，这场斗争将会提前到来。我们大家就等着看好戏吧。