4/8/2026 at 12:22:41 PM
> While handling the legal defense of Pastor Cai Zhuohua, who was charged with “illegal business practices” in 2004...I can't help but call to mind the concept of "illegal enemy combatants" who could be sent to Guantanamo Bay back in the War on Terror days [0]. It always struck me as a uniquely American concept that one could travel half a world away, attack someone's homeland, declare them to be fighting back in an illegal manner and get a pat on the back for upholding justice.
Obviously it'd be better for China - and the rest of us - if their internal dialog was more coherent. However it seems less useful to ruminate on one particular example. The country is so large that without estimates of magnitude and broad statistics all that can really be said is that everything happens somewhere in China. Any one example is ultimately an internal matter for them. Authoritarianism isn't much fun but the problem isn't the one-off miscarriages of justice but rather the seeping pervasiveness of forcing people to make stupid decisions instead of letting them better themselves in the manner that they see most fit.
> In today’s China,... judicial independence [is] labeled as erroneous ideological trends of the West. In fact, justice is justice, and doesn’t distinguish between East and West.
And I will say that if this part is what people wanted to focus on, the dry distinction between dependent and independent judiciary is actually one of the major advantages that the West maintains over China. But in the article it is more of a one-line thing and part of a longer, vaguer list
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_enemy_combatants#2001_...
by roenxi