No Man Above the Law?

On Tuesday, the Langfang Municipal Intermediate Court (in Hebei province, right outside Beijing) sentenced the deputy Grand Justice of China's supreme court to life in prison. Huang Songyou, the highest-level CCP official ever convicted on corruption charges, admitted to taking $570,000 in bribes from five different lawyers since 2005 in return for favorable rulings. He was also convicted of embezzling $176,000 of government money in 1997, while a lower court judge in Guangdong province. Huang hasn't indicated whether he plans to appeal.

Huang's case is just a highlight in the CCP's anti-corruption drive. The party feels that, to maintain its legitimacy and respect among average Chinese, it has to reverse this unfortunate part of its image. I wonder, though, how successful its attempts can be, especially in the short term. While we in the West are familiar with corrupt politicians, East Asian cultures, and no only China's, tend to view deep-seated graft and nepotism as inevitable byproducts of any system of power. My experiences lead me to think that citizens of those countries view that kind of behavior as more-or-less acceptable. Against this backdrop, it will be difficult for the CCP to convince the people that this kind of dealing isn't always going on behind the scenes.

The government also seized all of Huang's property, kicked him out of the CCP and forbade him from ever serving in government again. As far as I can tell, they took all his property, not only enough to cover what he illegally took.

Huang had been the high court's greatest proponent of constitutional reform and protections. How this conviction, and the anti-corruption campaign in general, will affect the tack of the supreme court toward or away from constitutionalism is something to watch.

Google China Hacked

Google.ca suffered a "sophisticated" attack some time in the last few days. In particular, the hackers targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The data sought seems to have been account information and email subject lines, rather than message content. Google hasn't accused the Chinese government of anything, but is considering closing its China operations and offices.

Secretary Clinton put out a press release this morning after its officials spoke with Google spokesmen, but didn't report any conclusions, either. The State Department says it will give a full public address on the issue next week after investigating.

One of Google's competitors claims the company's response is just posturing. According to the BBC, Baidu, a Chinese search engine, accused Google of using this episode as a way to justify what is at base a purely economic reason for pulling out. Since entering the China market, Google has lagged behind Baidu.

The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, praised Google for "showing it values its reputation for providing a secure service to users more than a leading position in a massive and growing market." That paper also points out that, while Google isn't the leading search engine in China, it has gone from a 13.2% market share in 2006, to 35.6% now, a very respectable increase.