Chinese Scholars: New Body
of Law Needed To Cover Human Rights, Private Property
As new revisions to the Chinese constitution were approved
to cover human rights and private property at the National
Peoples' Congress, Chinese scholars and observers noted
that a new body of law would need to be developed to cover
disputes in this area.
The current session of the National Peoples' Congress
has been particularly interesting, because the growing
role of private entrepreneurs and private capital have
come into the spotlight. Former Chinese president Jiang
Zemin spearheaded the acceptance of private entrepreneurs
into modern Chinese society. Until recently, private entrepreneurs
were criticized for "exploiting the working classes."
Now, that's history.
The message from the National Peoples' Congress is that
the private capitalists who exploited the working classes
before the founding of the Peoples' Republic in 1949 are
all gone, and the new private capitalists are now reformed,
and are assuming responsible roles as members of society,
and should be fully accepted into society without discrmination.
Now, private property will be protected by the constitution.
The change has been so great that some of the new private
entrepreneurs speaking at the NPC session went on the
offensive, and accused the government of discriminating
against them in getting capital to expand the business.
In a major turnaround, Chinese government ministers admitted
that there was "special treatment given to state-owned
enterprises", but that the government was determined
to change, and give equal treatment to all enterprises.
In addition, a new clause in the constitution guarantees
basic human rights.
Chinese scholars and observers said that it was not enough
to make changes to the constitution, but that whole new
bodies of law had to be developed so that disputes dealing
with human rights and private property could be resolved.
Without this, they said, the changes to the constitution
would not be effective, and would be meaningless.
In a change, some of the delegates to the NPC set up
websites to discuss how the changes would be made with
their constituencies.
In another major legal move, the Chinese Supreme Court
disallowed local and regional courts from dispensing the
death sentence for crimes. From now on, only the Supreme
Court would be allowed to hand out the death sentence.
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