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french lies posted:At this point this thread seems to have devolved into me just posting links, but I really felt I had to share this after seeing it. It's a long (three hours!) and excellent Frontline documentary about the Tian'anmen protests made in the late nineties. I thought it captured perfectly that moment in history, the arrogance of both sides and the pure but often naive idealism of the protesters. You really feel how things turn to poo poo as they fight among themselves and eventually get helplessly crushed by the machinery of the state. I'd written up about half a post on Chinese law, like promised, but I couldn't figure out how to make it entertaining or interesting to a general audience. I'll have another go at it next week...
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Apr 7, 2012 00:43
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Flopstick posted:By any chance, can anyone recommend any good books / blogs / documentaries / whatever that go into detail about living and working conditions for employees at Foxconn, treatment of labour disputes by the company and the expansion of export processing zones in mainland China? I ask because This American Life ended up having to retract their story on it, and I want to make sure that any source I use is definitely credible! Any suggestions gratefully received. China Labour Law Bulletin is an excellent resource for information on labour disputes and working conditions, particularly in southern China. The website itself is HK-based. It has a great blog as well. Edit: there's also a 2005 documentary called China Blue which is about migrant workers working in export-oriented textile factories in China. And I can second the recommendation for Factory Girls. Readman fucked around with this message at 01:01 on May 2, 2012 |
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May 2, 2012 00:57
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dj_clawson posted:If China deported everyone who ever acted in a protest against the government and will probably do it again, there wouldn't be a whole lot of people in China. TONS of people regularly protest conditions or corruption or policies. Whole towns do it. You would have to decide who's high-level and who's not. Oddly enough, the Chinese legal system is actually set up in a way that actually incentivises mass demonstrations as a means of getting the outcome you want in court.
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May 4, 2012 23:51
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Warcabbit posted:Okay, this, I want to understand. Lay it on me, brother. How's it work? I'm familiar with one version of the Chinese court system from reading Judge Dee, but I rather think that's a tad out of date. Briefly, sort of two related reasons: Firstly, desire to maintain 'harmonious' social relations. Mass incidents are seen as a failing of the local courts and local government. If you are able to get people together to demonstrate, you have the potential to embarrass the local authorities (who largely fund the local courts and decide which judges get promoted). Secondly, and relatedly, over the last decade or so, there are increasingly strong incentives for judges to mediate cases ('voluntarily') rather than allow litigation. By this I mean, the Supreme People's Court holds up as model judges those who limit litigation, and also provides for financial incentives for judges who keep the number of cases litigated to a minimum (I can dig the levels of compensation if you want). The emphasis on mediation and alternative dispute resolution is particularly true at the village level. So if you're increasingly deciding cases on an informal, mediation basis rather than a rules-based litigious basis, you're putting more power in the hands of the local judiciary. Going back to point 1, they don't want their benefactors to suffer political embarrassment, so you'll often see that they'll force mediation, with the intent of buying off or hushing up plaintiffs who have the potential to cause mass incidents (whether or not their claims are meritorious).
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May 5, 2012 12:11
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Modus Operandi posted:Sorry to bombard you with questions but does the home mortgage loan exist in the same way as it does in the U.S. Can people who own multiple condo units use those units to draw massive amounts of equity from it to buy more units? You can't really 'own' land in China (it's generally either leased from the government or owned by a village co-operative), but you can own buildings on the land. This arrangement doesn't have an analogy in western law, but there's no reason that, if you owned a building but not the land, that you couldn't put the building up as collateral.
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May 19, 2012 03:03
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Throatwarbler posted:What? You can lease land in the west, you can build buildings on them and use the leasehold as collateral too. Say I'm in the US (assuming it works the same as in Australia), if I lease land to build a building and then the land lease expires, what happens to the building? Now think about what I described in China and what would happen in that situation. Edit: looking at my previous post, I just notice that I used the word 'lease' (as in lease from the government) - which is probably where a lot of the confusion is coming from, my bad! Readman fucked around with this message at 12:47 on May 19, 2012 |
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May 19, 2012 09:49
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:You get usage and other rights to the land. Unproductive land loses those rights generally as does unlawful usage. Quite a few other countries operate the same way. A big difference here being that there are no property taxes and even once implemented they will not have any bearing on the vast majority of the population. Generally, if you have to pay money on a regular basis for the land or risk having it taken away, then no, you do not own it. I agree with everything you said, but to clarify why I said 'you can't really 'own' land in China' is that it's one of the many areas of law in China that has been left vague and contradictory (as you alluded to above). The Chinese property law appears to contradict itself on the question of what happens when a land use right expires. Article 22 in the real estate law provides for automatic approval of requests to extend the time limit, with the only qualifier being that the LUR holder applied within the time period. If that provision is applied as written (obviously a big 'if' and it assumes that the law won't change), then the maximum term doesn't really mean anything at all - the state has quite effectively constrained its ability to reclaim LURs. Of course, we're not going to know what'll happen until LURs start expiring.
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May 19, 2012 10:09
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flatbus posted:Bo was expelled from the Communist Party today In the post-Mao era, the CCP has developed a fairly normalised system for promoting leaders and cadres through the party, and for channeling criticism within the party (ages ago I did a brief post on promotion of judges in the PRC, there is something similar for CCP cadres). However, this doesn't really apply at the very highest levels, where succession is governed by balance-of-power relationships. As such, the higher-level cadres have good reason to be suspicious of anyone who tries to set themselves apart. Bo was seen by other high-level leaders as too outspoken and not willing to play by the rules. He played into all the anxieties about a high-profile, charismatic leader wanting to upset the apple cart. So he was banished to Chongqing to keep him quiet, which he used as a platform to start developing a personal following and developed the 'Chongqing model'. Wang Lijun was the final straw, but he was disliked intensely within the CCP long before that.
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Sep 29, 2012 03:23
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GuestBob posted:If I was going to lay money on the next big political change in China it wouldn't be democracy, it would be the gradual shift of power from Beijing to the provinces. Something has got to give when lots of people in Shanghai have more in common (on a day to day level) with people in Seoul than they do with people in Gansu. The central government can only use the local governments as patsies for so long before making some actual improvements in their level of accountability too. I would have said the opposite. Eg. Right now, there are a lot of authorities which are nominally responsible to the central government (courts/police/mediators/procuracy/etc.) but, due to their dual funding model, end up beholden to the provincial and municipal authorities. As the central government grows wealthier, it'll be able to more effectively fund its authorities, making them more reliant on Beijing and less reliant on the local party bosses or state congress. hitension posted:Here's a far more fun topic than the previous one: How long do you all think it will take for China to transition to democracy? Or do you think it will go on doing its own thing forever? I think that most people here are going to be on the side of 'not likely anytime soon'. Barring a cataclysmic economic collapse that completely changes the rules of the political game (see: Suharto in Indonesia), that's something I'd agree with. The way I always think about it is to try and picture what the driving force in Chinese society for democratisation is going to be. I think in the 1990s and even up to early 00s you could sorta see the germinations of (at least) a liberal civil society. Looking at the legal side of things, you had courts pushing the boundaries of their judicial powers, somewhat independent law societies, new areas of law that had promise, growth in legal activism. Of those, the only one that hasn't been totally clamped down on is legal activism. And even it has been constrained to politically 'safe' cases - eg. fighting discrimination against Hep-B patients, pursuing companies for wage claims, pursuing claims against local governments (where the interests of the plaintiff align with that of Beijing). It's worth understanding the Chinese political system on its own terms, rather than judging it on how soon it's going to come around to a western-model.
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Oct 1, 2012 13:41
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