Abstract
The development of China’s socialist legal system has seen the emergence of a new phenomenon of ‘rights defenders’, who have challenged the regime to live up to the promises of its policies and laws. In a stark departure from the formalistic practices of legal compliance, which permitted controversy over a range of legal issues but did not tolerate resistance against the Party/state, the weiquan (rights defence 维权) movement represents the beginnings of efforts to use law to challenge the government and its officials. This engaging book provides essential information and analysis on the emergence and implications of the phenomenon of rights defenders.
Beginning with the reactions to the 2008 melamine-tainted milk scandal that poisoned thousands of children (some 300,000 admitted by the regime), Jonathan Benney traces the origins of the rights defenders movement to efforts by ordinary members of society to seek compensation for regulatory failure. Efforts to pursue remedies from the officialdom by ordinary PRC citizens often came at great risk and with little prospect of reward. Nonetheless, these efforts have continued, driven in large part by principled conclusions that the PRC government should enforce its own laws and regulations protecting social well-being and restricting corruption.
Expanding on his doctoral dissertation research, Benney examines the ways in which the weiquan movement has developed and expanded, giving particular attention to questions of dispute resolution under the conditions of ‘fragmented authoritarianism’. In a context where the regime is increasingly unable to control the parameters of the discourse around legitimate rights and interests, citizens have been able to, in Benney’s words, ‘manipulate the discourse of rights and rights defence to their own ends’. Examining the tension between citizen entrepreneurialism and the need for some level of accommodation with the Party/state, Benney paints a complex picture of contention and accommodation in the context of rights defence efforts.
Benney provides an invaluable service by exploring in detail the evolving meanings of the term weiquan, commonly but imperfectly translated as ‘rights defence’. Benney then focuses on three different stakeholder groups engaged in the rights defence effort, namely government, citizens, and defence activists. Analysis of government support for rights defence touches on broader questions of the development of the PRC legal system. Building on the work of other China law scholars, Benney focuses on government-tolerated efforts to defend the rights and interests of women, workers, and consumers.
The regime’s capacity to control the parameters of rights defence quickly eroded, however, as citizens began to appropriate the term in pursuit of their own interests. Citizen use of rights defence discourse exemplifies the notion of ‘rights entrepreneurship’, and Benney offers several useful case studies to illustrate this process. Supported by print publications (so-called rights defence manuals) and social media, citizen rights defence efforts expanded to include property rights as well as resistance to regulatory failure and misconduct by officials. Benney notes that citizens’ rights defence represents the dynamics of resistance and agency, as accommodation with the Party/state combines with capacity to challenge government decisions and action.
Benney then moves to the perspective of lawyers in the use of rights defence. Drawing again on a range of case studies, he depicts how lawyers in China have pursued rights enforcement on behalf of clients and in so doing have expanded the boundaries of the rule of law. Benney concludes that the shifting meaning of rights defence allows flexible approaches to framing a range of problems in China through the engagement of government, citizens, and legal professionals. The significance of weiquan lives in its reflection on state–society relations and in the expansion of legal knowledge across multiple communities in China. The survival of these contributions is cast into doubt in Benney’s Afterword, which notes the government crackdowns on rights defenders in the government’s pursuit of stability.
The rights defence phenomenon in contemporary China reflects a range of challenges presented by the socialist legal system. Jonathan Benney’s useful book provides an excellent treatment of the emergence of the rights defence movement and so invites better understanding of the development of China’s socialist legal system generally. This valuable book will be useful reading for specialists on China’s legal and political systems, as well as for graduate students and others with reasonably advanced levels of knowledge on contemporary China.