Judicial Expansion of Criminality for Stability: State Control of Rural Resistance to Land Acquisition in China

Description

China’s criminal justice system is underdeveloped in the sense that the procedural rights of defendants are not adequately protected. Enormous discretion is given to law enforcement, prosecutors and courts to delineate criminality. Political influence also interferes with the fairness of criminal trials. In recent years, the judicial expansion of criminal laws has led many defendants being caught on the “wrong side of the law” as a result of trivial breaches. This situation is most acute in rural resistance to land acquisition. The judicial extension of criminal law is greatly motivated by the fact that authorities can no longer contain the eruption of petitions and protests resulting from rural land acquisition. Courts (working closely with law enforcers and prosecutors) are frequently deploying pocket crimes to quell protests. A common offence that has seen substantial expansion in judicial application is the offence of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Even the Supreme People’s Court admitted that this offence has been overly extended due to its unclear definition. Judicial criminalisation of rural protests against land acquisition epitomises the social tension between the state, local governments, village collectives and individual rural land owners. Its significance is self-evident given the vastness of rural China and the growing importance of rural development under Xi Jinping’s policy to revitalise suburban and rural regions. It also provides a special angle to dissect the impact of judicial criminalisation on China’s justice system and society at large. It underscores the wider debate on what exactly should be the reach of the criminal code in authoritarian regimes. While courts in China are involved in social governance in reality, the over extension of criminal law in adjudication can jeopardise the legitimacy of the judiciary. To date, no study has attempted to measure the extent of the judicial expansion of criminal law and its impact on China’s criminal justice system. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative empirical data, this project seeks to fill this literature gap by answering the questions how Chinese courts expand criminal law to control rural resistance to land acquisition and how it impacts China's justice system.