Jottings from the Granite Studio

From ESWN comes the remarkable story and pictures of collective action over a possible judicial cover-up in the death of popular high school teacher, Dai Haijing (戴海静), in Zhejiang.

ESNW has photos as well as links to the actions by students and townspeople in Tanxia township (near Rui’an 瑞安 city) as well as translations of reports and blog postings that raise serious questions to official reports of “death by suicide.”

Frustration over China’s opaque judicial system is growing. In situtations such as this, people have little recourse but to take collective action. Without access to the courts or faith in the independence of the judiciary, the government leaves the people with precious few alternatives.
There were of course cases such as this during the Qing as well. Convictions were made using torture and judicial decisions were made based on expediency rather than ‘justice.’ But there existed a class of people known as song’gun 讼棍，who acted as small-time lawyers and who knew ways to get cases heard by the magistrate. Melissa Macauley, professor of History at Northwestern, has written a great book about the song’gun called Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (1998). The song’gun were despised by the literati and the officials, and they often did file frivolous complaints, but at the same time, they were indispensable for common people who sought redress from the legal system. In today’s China, people who act on behalf of others against the system face the fate of Chen Guangcheng. It is a problem in bad need of a solution.