Authored by Tom Plate –
An interview of Karen Tse on China’s evolving judicial system.

In America, when you get arrested, you get a lawyer. In China, when you get arrested, you get beaten. That is the daunting difference between the criminal practices of these two great countries. But slowly, they may be moving a bit closer together – for better and for worse.

In China, authorities appear to be edging in the direction of a better system than the oft-celebrated method of “beat them until they admit they did it (whether or not they, in fact, did)”.

This, at least, is the fervent testimony of American-trained lawyer and Harvard Divinity School graduate Minister Karen Tse. Her International Bridges to Justice – a Geneva-based international coalition of lawyers, academics and business leaders – has been helping lawyers and officials in China (as well as in Cambodia and Vietnam) to develop better practices for handling people accused of a crime.

Their collective progress appears to be incremental – but substantial. In China, for a long time, being in custody was known to mean that you must be guilty of the crime – because the police never make mistakes – even though you actually confessed only after being beaten by officers. But new rules, endorsed by the central government, include not only the right to a lawyer who is to be allowed to operate without fear, but also prohibitions against the use of torture or other proscribed means of duress to obtain information or confession.

“The Chinese are moving forward,” said Ms Tse. “Sure, the Chinese still have a long way to go, but this is all about hope. The whole idea of defendants’ rights is now very popular in China.” China is just starting to implement an adversarial system for defendants, and so has a long way to go. The non-profit coalition is helping by teaching lawyers how to play the game. Movement is mostly forward: 500,000 copies of the new rights of the accused are in circulation and government support, at least initially, is there. The project, under the sway of Ms Tse, is impressive for what it holds out for China – and, by contrast, what disturbing questions it raises about recent corrosive trends regarding America’s own standards of criminal rights. “What’s happening in our own country is awful,” said Ms Tse – a US citizen – referring to the controversy over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

Ironically enough, the series of unfortunate developments actually contained an unexpected bonus for Ms Tse and her allies. The controversy that makes America look bad to many Americans actually makes the US look more real and human to the Chinese.

“The fact that the Chinese can say, `we hear things like the torture issue are not going so well for you in America’ helps Americans maintain a credible posture of even-handedness. If you look too pristine or too preachy, it doesn’t work. They don’t want to be lectured to,” she said.

China, celebrating five millennia of existence, is not exactly the toddler on the world stage. The most effective Americans working on the mainland soon discover that a dollop of respect gets more done than gallon of reprimand.

That is why Ms Tse’s coalition and other goal-driven non-profit organisations avoid politics or political posturing. Everyone has problems, not just China.

It would be a colossal stretch to imagine the day when China’s protections for the accused even come close to mirroring those of the US. But, right now, the trend lines seem to be sort of oddly – if only somewhat – reversed. That in itself is rather interesting.

Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the founder of the Asia-Pacific Media Network. Distributed by UCLA Media Centre.