• Chinese ex-police detained while trying to stamp out corruption

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    Chinese soldiers march past the Great Hall of the People after a pre-opening session of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, on March 4, 2013 in Beijing, China.

    By Le Li, Producer, NBC News

    BEIJING — The call came late on Monday night.

    "More than 70 police raided our (guest house)," said former policeman He Zuhua. "Police are everywhere."

    His voice shook and he soon hung up, fearing that authorities would trace the call to the public telephone on the capital’s ragged outskirts. NBC News has been unable to reach him since.

    He says he and a handful of former police officers are being pursued and detained by authorities after traveling to the capital to help shine a light on corruption within their ranks. The officers have joined droves of unhappy citizens who annually converge on Beijing in the hopes of petitioning their leaders for help during the annual National People's Congress which started Monday. Each spring scores of petitioners are pulled from buses, trains, sidewalks, and simple hotels and locked up in secret locations, known as "black jails."


    The police stand out because all were once part of the justice system they seek to reform. According to two members of the group of 14 hoping to press for change, all of them are former police officers claiming to be themselves victims of pervasive corruption. 

    Their plight underscores how hard it is to combat patronage and graft in China, and how easy it was for insiders to fall from grace, said Hu Xingdou, a professor at Beijing Institute of Technology.

    "In a country that lacks legal protection, it is not safe for anyone," he said. "In China the judiciary, which is the base of anti-corruption, is not just."

    "Anyone can fall into a disadvantaged group from an advantaged group," he added.

    The crackdown on police petitioners came after China’s new leader Xi Jinping declared war on corruption, staking his name to promises that he would root out graft that infests everything from kindergarten admissions to the highest levels of government. He has called for anti-corruption campaigns ranging from banning luxury banquets to prohibiting floral displays and red carpet treatment for the official delegations.

    According to He, he and the other former police officers from around the country were first rounded up on Feb. 24 as they ate together in a restaurant in Beijing. After 24 hours, three of the petitioners were taken from the detention facility with officials from their home provinces, He said. The rest "escaped," he said.

    "Corruption in the judicial system is the cause of all corruption," he said before the Feb. 24 incident. "If we cannot change this, then China will collapse."

    Police officials contacted by NBC News denied any knowledge of a raid involving former officers.

    He says he had worked in a county investigation unit in China’s central Henan province until 2002 when he refused to give false evidence in a trial involving local officials. He was sentenced to a year in prison on charges of corruption, He says.

    Senior officials in Henan told him that his case lacked the proper evidence and promised a new investigation, He says. A decade after He lost his job and nothing had been done about the case.

    Both of the police officers NBC News interviewed said they had traveled to Beijing to protest corruption within the judicial system, and hoped to present an open letter asking the delegates of the NPC to address the issue.

    The NPC, made up of nearly 3,000 candidates is vested with lawmaking powers. In reality, it has acted mainly as a rubber stamp for the ruling Communist Party decisions. Over time, however, votes on measures or candidates nominated by the party have stopped being unanimous, signaling growing diversity if not the emergence of an opposition. Petitioners come from all over the country seeking redress for wrongs.

    Tian Lan says she was once an award-winning senior police officer. After exposing a corruption scandal among local police in Northern Hebei province in 2002, Tian says she was jailed and tortured for a year. A Guangping court in Hebei charged Tian with six crimes including passing on states secrets, but the court failed to present evidence.

    Since then Tian says she has been a petitioner. She says that to prevent her from petitioning, the local government has refused to renew her national identity card, which she needs to apply for a new job. Sometimes Tian has had to beg for food, she says.

    "If people like me, who are inside the system, are mistreated like this, can you imagine how average citizens are treated?" Tian asked in tears.

    Tian and He are not unique.

    In the vast central city of Chonqqing, over 1,000 policemen, were recently given back their jobs as redress for mistreatment suffered at the hands of notoriously heavy-handed deposed police chief Wang Lijun. Wang has since been charged with crimes of abuse power for his role in a scandal that brought down charismatic Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai.

    Before their arrest Tian and He told NBC they knew they might be detained before their demonstration.

    "We are not here out of personal interest, but to fight against this nation’s corruption," said He. "This country must change."

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    China's Anti-Corruption Drive Hits New Year Sales

    China seals fate of disgraced politician Bo Xilai ahead of key leadership congress

  • China's Anti-Corruption Drive Hits New Year Sales

    By Eunice Yoon, Senior Correspondent, CNBC

    BEIJING – At the Lai Tai flower market in Beijing, florist Chen Jun can already sense that the Year of the Snake is going to take a bite out of his business.

    The Lunar New Year holiday is usually his busiest -- and most profitable.  For the past eight years, orders from government departments would pour in for extravagant bouquets earmarked for state events.

    Not this year.

    “Normally, there would be a lot of military officers coming for flowers here,” he said pointing to the empty aisles at the market. “Government orders have dropped 20 to 30 percent.”

    For the Chinese, Lunar New Year is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s rolled up into one. A record 3.41 billion trips are expected to be made in 2013 during the travel rush as hundreds of millions get on trains and planes carrying gifts for their families.

    But the Year of the Snake promises to be different for government officials.

    China's new leaders, who officially take the helm in March, have been sensitive to growing criticism of government corruption.  Incoming  President Xi Jinping has promised to go after tainted officials no matter the rank.  He has also called on Communist Party cadres to scale back on excess.  On the list of items officers will have to survive without: elaborate flower arrangements, red carpets, and lavish banquets. 

    Even the national liquor Moutai, a traditional toasting drink during festive events, is on the hit list.

    Yin Xiangang said his liquor shop is in a dry spell and it could last all year.  His sales of Moutai are down 40 percent.  "All the government departments are drinking less," he lamented.  Kweichow Moutai, one of the best known premium spirits producers, lost $2 billion, or 5.5 percent of its value, on the Shanghai bourse immediately after the new regulations were announced last December.

    Despite evidence some bureaucrats are tightening their belts, many in the public are cynical about how much is PR spin and how much is a real attack on corruption.

    Investigative blogger Zhu Ruifeng uncovered a sex extortion ring that has led to the ouster of more than ten government officials.  Instead of getting rewarded, he's been harassed.  Zhu said the police hounded him at his home and called him in for questioning -- searching for information on his sources. 

    "The last few leaders all promised to fight against corruption but when we wanted to root it out, we were always threatened and stopped,” he said. “Xi Jinping should take action and not only talk big."

    China watchers say any dramatic action could erode loyalty to Xi within the system.

    After the Lunar New Year, officials in the southern province of Guangdong plan to start a pilot project that would require government officials to report their assets, investments, and employment status of their spouses and children.  The experimental program is aimed at fighting corruption.

    Jiang Chunqiao, another florist at the Lai Tai market, said the drop-off in his personal sales is worth the overall anti-corruption effort by the government.  “I think the waste ban should not be lifted,” he said.  “[Corruption] should be brought under control.”

     

    This piece originally appeared on CNBC.com

     

     

  • China seals fate of disgraced politician Bo Xilai ahead of key leadership congress

    How Hwee Young / EPA

    Bo Xilai, who had been a candidate for top office in China until caught up in a scandal that included a murder, will face charges for abuse of power, bribe taking and improper relations with a number of women.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    BEIJING - China's ruling Communist Party accused disgraced politician Bo Xilai of abusing power, taking huge bribes and other crimes on Friday, sealing the fate of a controversial figure whose fall shook the country's looming leadership succession.


    The once high-flying Bo faces a criminal investigation and will almost certainly end up in jail.

    "Bo Xilai's actions created grave repercussions and did massive harm to the reputation of the party and state, producing an extremely malign effect at home and abroad," the official statement from a party leaders' meeting said, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency. 

    The Politburo statement also said that Bo took huge amounts of bribes directly or through his family and that he "maintained illicit relationships with numerous females." 

    The criticisms and allegations against Bo amount to throwing the book at him: The wide-ranging charges go back more than a decade to when he was mayor of Dalian and continue through his removal as Chongqing party secretary in March. 

    The Politburo panel said that the 18th Party Congress would begin on Nov. 8, paving the way for a once-a-decade leadership change at the highest levels of the Communist party. 

    The 204-member Central Committee, a cross-section of the national party elite, usually convenes about a week before the congress to approve decisions already made by the Politburo. Privately, the committee will also approve the incoming leaders and a policy blueprint for the next five years. 

    China closes in on Bo Xilai after jailing ex-police chief

    The congress had been expected to take place in mid-October, though the preparations were overshadowed by the Bo scandal, China's biggest in a decade. 

    The late start -- relative to past party congresses -- could allow for Bo to be dealt with before the congress starts and give the next generation of leaders a relatively clean political slate to work from.

    China's most politically explosive trial wrapped in a matter of hours when Gu Kailai, the wife of Chinese politician Bo Xilai, did not object to murder charges against her. ITV's Angus Walker reports.

    The scandal was set off when a trusted Bo aide disclosed that Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, had murdered a British businessman.

    Bo was sacked as party chief of the city of Chongqing; Gu Kailai was given a suspended death sentence after confessing to the murder; and the aide, Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, received a 15-year prison term for initially covering up the murder and other misdeeds. 

    The official statement also said that Bo had been expelled from the party as well as the elite, decision-making Politburo and Central Committee "in view of his errors and culpability in the Wang Lijun incident and the intentional homicide case involving Bogu Kailai." Bogu is his wife Gu Kailai's official but rarely used surname.

    Wang Lijun, the Chinese police chief who exposed the murder of a British business man, has been sentenced to 15 years in jail after being found guilty of abuse of power, bribery and defection

    It was not immediately clear what was meant by the reference to Bo's responsibility in the murder, although the abuse of power charges against Bo could be related to obstruction of justice in the case.

    It was the first direct mention of Bo in state media in months. His name was not mentioned for both Gu's and Wang's trials. 

    The end of those trials cleared the way for the party to decide whether to charge Bo with criminal wrongdoing.

    The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician has been given a suspended death sentence for her role in the death of British businessman, Neil Heywood.  ITV's Angus Walker reports.

    Bo's ouster from the leadership early this year opened a window into the divisive jostling for power that took place as president and party leader Hu Jintao prepared to retire to make way for younger leaders. 

    After wife's conviction, what next for Bo Xilai?

    The government is grappling with a rapidly slowing economy and a bitter territorial dispute with Japan that has sparked violent street protests and is having an impact on trade ties.

    Labor unrest, a growing urban middle class, and anger over corruption and illegal land seizures are fueling demands for reform.

    NBC News' Ed Flanagan, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • China's political scandal embroils Britain

    China's Communist party unleashed its full weight against former politician Bo Xilai and his wife at the center of a murder scandal Wednesday. ITN's Angus Walker reports from Beijing.

    By Adrienne Mong

    LONDON—China’s biggest political scandal in decades has embroiled not just the U.S. but increasingly the U.K.

    The series of publicly known events culminating in the removal of rising political star Bo Xilai from power appeared to have been triggered by an attempt by Bo’s former police chief to seek asylum in a U.S. consulate in Chengdu back in February.

    However, it looks increasingly like it was the death of a British businessman last year that set off the chain of events.  And while it might not lead to any firings in the U.K. government, it certainly appears to have ruffled feathers in London.


    Murder in Chonqging?
    Last November, Neil Heywood — a 41-year old Briton who liked to hint at a life of intrigue (his license plate contained the numbers 007) — was found dead last November in his hotel room in the southwestern municipality of Chongqing, which at the time was under Bo’s stewardship.  The cause of death was initially reported as cardiac arrest from overconsumption of alcohol.

    Now it looks as though Bo’s ex-crimefighter, Wang Lijun, had evidence suggesting that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai had engineered Heywood’s death. 

    Leon Neal / AFP - Getty Images

    Chinese Communist Party official Li Changchun and British Prime Minister David Cameron met at Downing Street Tuesday.

    New details on Tuesday about Wang’s frantic 36-hour stay at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February suggest he tried to give American diplomats information implicating Gu in Heywood’s death and demonstrating that Bo had tried to prevent an investigation into his wife’s role. 

    In a startling revelation, also on Tuesday, sources close to the Chinese investigation told Reuters that Heywood had threatened to expose Gu’s plan to move large sums of money overseas after a dispute over his cut from the transaction.   

    Chinese officials began stepping up their inquiry into Heywood’s death after Wang was whisked away by Beijing authorities following his visit to the U.S. consulate.

    Scandal sends China's netizens into afeeding frenzy

    In Britain, opposition members of Parliament (MPs) have raised questions whether the U.K. government had been too cautious or slow to raise concerns in the case because it did not want to jeopardize commercial prospects in China.

    During Tuesday’s Parliament session, Foreign Secretary William Hague presented MPs with a detailed timetable of events surrounding Heywood’s death.

    “We have demanded an investigation. The Chinese authorities have agreed to conduct an investigation. There’s been a further discussion of that this afternoon,” he told MPs.  “

    Hague said Foreign Office officials first heard in mid-January of rumors circulating amongst British expats in China.

    But it wasn’t until a month later — a day after Wang’s ill-fated visit to the U.S. consulate — that officials flagged the case with Hague and other ministers back in London.

    British government under heat
    Hague’s appearance in Parliament coincided with a visit to 10 Downing Street by one of China’s top ministers, Li Changchun.

    Li — the propaganda chief and a member of the all-powerful Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee — held a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who raised the matter with him.

    In an abrupt departure from the earlier muted approach, Cameron has promised to demand more from the Chinese on Heywood’s death, which has become tabloid fodder over here.  Cameron also read the riot act to his intelligence chiefs.

    The Foreign Office has declined to comment further on Li’s meeting or the situation regarding Heywood.

    The story, in the meantime, continues to rivet the public in Britain and in China.

    “I guess it’s just a good story for normal people,” said an overseas Chinese national now living in London who only wanted to be identified as Lucy.  “Murder, high-powered officials, it’s got all the ingredients.”

  • Chinese artist's portraits of corruption

    The list of corrupt officials in China is long. A Chinese artist has created a gallery of 1,600 tacky, pink-hued, currency-colored portraits to make sure they are not forgotten.

    By Bo Gu, NBC News

    BEIJING – Zhang Bingjian’s art studio in the northern suburb of Beijing looks like a simple one. Spiral stairs lead to a small penthouse where he stores his books and makes tea for guests, a big wooden desk sits downstairs, and a huge map of China hangs on the wall. 

    But something catches your attention when you walk in: Dozens of huge portraits on the wall, all in bright pink, all of Chinese government officials convicted of corruption charges.

    Most of the officials are in prison, some have been executed, and others have been sentenced to “death with reprieve” – which in China means a life sentence.

    Zhang came up with the idea of creating his “hall of shame” as early as March 2009, during China’s National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of Communist Party officials.  It was then that he learned that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in the previous year alone. 

    “I was shocked at the numbers, I did not realize there were so many,” Zhang told NBC News during a recent visit to his studio.  “China is in such a transition period, those corruption issues also should be witnessed in a historic context.”

    The artist decided to depict the history of China’s shame as part of an ongoing project. But he is not the actual painter – the portraits are mass-produced just like other “made-in-China” commodities. 

    Zhang picks a publicly prosecuted government official, finds his age, crime, and most importantly, a photo of him – then he sends it to Dafen village in southern China, a place famous for churning out cheap, Wal-Mart-quality oil paintings for the whole world.  Through an assistant, Zhang finds artists in Dafen village to paint the portraits in a deliberately tacky and assembly-line style to reflect China’s 30 years as the world’s leading exporter of low-end, mass manufacturing. Their rosy hue is the same bright pink color as the Chinese currency.

    Zhang doesn’t remember all the names of the officials portrayed and says he doesn’t want to play the role of a judge or prosecutor. “For me, I see the project as a whole instead of each individual portion,” he said.

    Widespread corruption
    Critics say corruption has long been one of China’s most chronic problems. Chinese presidents and premiers, including the current leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have publicly denounced rampant corruption for years, but standards of conduct only seem to deteriorate. 

    Out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index – which measures the perceived levels of corruption in public sectors – China ranked 78th.

    That’s lower than most other developed countries, as well as many developing countries such as Brazil and Cuba.
    According to a Beijing News report last May, 24,406 government officials were jailed in 2010 for corruption, up 9.4 percent from 2009.  Almost 6,000 of them were sentenced to more than five years in prison.  

    China is also one of the few countries in the world that executes its citizens on corruption charges.  Some of the officials captured in Zhang’s portraits have already been executed, including the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration and the former governor of Guangxi province.

    As of today, Zhang has produced about 1,600 portraits.  Some hang on his studio wall; others are stacked in wooden crates, waiting to be displayed either in China or overseas. 

    Zhang joked about ideas for his next exhibition.

    “Maybe we can do another project for the U.S. America also has corrupt officials so the painting would be green, the color of U.S. dollars,” he said.

    When asked whether or when he will ever finish the project, Zhang admitted one day he might have to stop producing the portraits if he cannot continue to finance himself and the 20-plus painters he employs.  Still, he doesn’t really know when he’ll move on.
     “It could end soon, probably within the next five years.  It could also be the next 15 years.  Part of the beauty of this piece is it’s open-ended,” he said with a smile. 

    (Celeste Ho contributed to the story.)

  • China's Communist Party marks 90th birthday

    Adrienne Mong

    Statues of the Long March survivors greet visitors inside the Yan'an Revolution Museum.

    By Adrienne Mong

    YAN’AN, Shaanxi Province—It’s known as the cradle of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    A sleepy city of two million that is regularly overrun by millions of visitors paying homage to the CPC’s founding fathers, Yan’an is near the final destination of the legendary Long March the Communists undertook from late 1934 to late 1935 to escape the tightening grip of the Nationalist Party and its army.

    It was here that Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and thousands of other CPC members made Yan’an their Central Committee headquarters from 1937 to 1947.

    And in recent months, it’s been THE place to visit.

    “We’re here to pay tribute to the Communist Party and to mark its [90th] anniversary,” said a Beijing man who reluctantly gave his name as Zhao and identified himself as a Party member.  He was joined by at least a dozen or so other Party cadres from the capital’s Pinggu district.  “Yan’an has a lot of meaning to us.”

    Zhao had been encouraged to divulge his Party credentials—a rare gesture for cadres—by State Council officials who had organized a media trip to Yan’an a couple of weeks ahead of the CPC’s founding anniversary on Friday.

    “Go on, you can talk to them, let them ask you a few questions,” said one minder as two or three of us journalists waited expectantly.

    Training cadres

    Adrienne Mong

    A group of Party members from Beijing pose in Zaoyuan, Yan'an.

    Government-organized trips are best avoided for obvious reasons, but on this occasion the media were going to be allowed access to tour the China Executive Leadership Academy in Yan’an.

    This CPC school is one of three so-called national training bases for Communist Party cadres.  The other two are in Jinggangshan in Jiangxi (where the Long March began) and Pudong in Shanghai. 

    Overseeing these three are the Chinese Academy of Governance and the Central Party School in Beijing (“the highest institution charged with the task of training senior and middle-ranking leading cadres of the Party and fostering Marxist theoretical cadres,” according to a brochure).

    It’s instructive just visiting the website for each institute. 

    The Jinggangshan academy’s site looks much like any other Chinese government bureau website, and the language is the familiar Party rhetoric one hears from officials all the time.  Take the mission statement, for instance: “Seeking truth from facts, keeping pace with the times; maintaining the style of arduous struggle and exercising state power for the people.”

    The Pudong academy’s website, on the other hand, is sleek with a simple design and font.  Its mission statement couldn’t be further from its Jinggangshan counterpart in tenor and jargon, sounding very much like the management training center it strives to be: “CELAP, by the integration of ‘value education, capacity building, and behavior orientation,’ strives to foster and sustain strong, ethical and effective leadership for coordinated development of economy and society.”

    A corporate retreat

    The tone of the Yan’an academy website strikes a note somewhere between those of Jinggangshan and Pudong--much like it appears in reality.

    Its spacious campus, lush gardens, and clean, modern facilities rival that of any modern Western institution.  At the same time, it serves as a dramatic backdrop for a chorus of cadres belting out “impromptu” revolutionary songs.

    Since the site was completed in 2005, the Yan’an school has trained around 28,000 cadres in ten-day or two-week sessions.  The tuition is free, and cadres are encouraged to take advantage of the courses—depending on their rank and need.

    At any given time, only 240 to 260 Party members are on campus, steeping themselves in the lore of the Communist Party—whether it be through classes in Marxist-Leninism, learning traditional rural Chinese dances, or performing “red songs” of the revolutionary era.

    The “students” we saw one night practicing a fan dance on the tennis court were director-level cadres.  It was a compulsory lesson, replete with live music and female instructors in Party uniform shouting out instructions, but it was clear from the expressions of the students that they were enjoying the drill.

    Adrienne Mong

    Party cadres learn traditional dances at the Yan'an Executive Leadership Academy.

    In fact, there was something about the whole enterprise that suggested a corporate retreat with a heavy emphasis on team-building exercises or an Outward Bound session.

    All these activities weren’t simply about reinforcing Party doctrine and Party history but a means of forging bonds between the cadres and the Party itself and fostering a greater camaraderie among Party members.

    “I’ve been to Yan’an many times since the 1980s, just looking around, but this time it’s different” said Liu Hong, Secretary-General of the China Flower Association.  She was sitting in on a lecture about Mao Zedong Thought.  “I feel as though I have a deeper learning and understanding of Yan’an, our Party history, and our Party.”

    “It’s important to walk the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” said Yang Zhihe, the course instructor from Xi’an.  “I believe each step we take will be better than the last.  The change of the last thirty years…is proof of that.”

    "Serve the people"

    Classes are held every morning at the academy.  In the afternoon, however, cadres are given tours of Yan’an’s historical sites.  In Zaoyuan, where Mao and his cohorts lived from 1943-45, a small group of cadres sat on folding stools in the shade, listening to Jiao Liansan give a spirited account of the Long March.

    “This isn’t like what you’ve seen in the movies,” Jiao told his rapt audience.  “It wasn’t a neat file of soldiers.  It was messy….  Men didn’t even have shoes, just maybe cloth to wrap around their feet as they hiked.”

    Jiao, in fact, had no shortage of colorful sayings that stayed on message: serve the people. 

    “If you don’t put the people in your heart, they won’t put you on their shoulders,” he said, quoting an old CPC saying.

    Much like the message the CPC Central Committee Party School Vice-President Chen Baosheng gave in a recent press briefing in Beijing.

    Adrienne Mong

    One of the original beds in Yan'an, where the chain-smoking Mao once slept, is covered with cigarettes--an homage by visitors.

    “Our charter says the CPC has no self-interest.  Our overall interest is to serve the people,” said Chen without a trace of irony, despite a persistent line of questioning by reporters that suggested exactly the opposite.

    Corruption also features as a subject in academy classes.  If there’s one thing that threatens the fabric of the CPC and its very existence it’s corruption—widespread and endemic among the 80-million strong Party ranks. 

    So much so that President Hu Jintao addressed it in his speech on Friday marking the CPC’s founding anniversary:

    “And the whole Party is confronted with growing danger of lacking in drive, incompetence, divorce from the people, lacking in initiative, and corruption. It has thus become even more important and urgent than ever before for the Party to police itself and impose strict discipline on its members.”

    So much so that despite all the celebrations and happy, smiling cadres being televised across monitors around the country on Friday, many Chinese are too cynical to buy into the mantra.

    Which is why the Party leadership also takes great pains to rehash its history—a time of great turmoil in the country—in order to remind Chinese everywhere that it’s still best positioned to steer the country.

  • 'Milkshake Murder' retrial tests Hong Kong rule of law

    By Adrienne Mong

    We marvel at Hong Kong every time we visit it.

    Not for its glitz and glamour, restaurants, or shopping.

    Adrienne Mong / NBC News

    Hong Kong is prized as much for its rule of law as for its iconic skyline.

    But because even though it sits on the edge of mainland China, was handed back to Beijing in 1997 and has more than its fair share of folks kowtowing to the central government up north, it's still not China.

    In Hong Kong, we can access anything we want on the Internet without having to resort to using a proxy server.

    In Hong Kong, a ragtag group of Falun Gong followers has a permanent stakeout by the Wanchai ferry pier.

    In Hong Kong, large banners decrying the banks or injustices decorate prominent buildings in the Central business district.

    In Hong Kong, people still take to the streets to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or rally to secure the release of imprisoned mainland Chinese activists like Zhao Lianhai.

    And it’s the place where many mainland Chinese students who don’t want to study in the West will choose to pursue graduate studies in journalism, because while Hong Kong “is Chinese,” one such student told me recently, “it is not China.”

    Retrial tests Hong Kong's judiciary system
    This tiny miracle of a place has managed to maintain its identity as an autonomous territory that values Western freedoms despite all the death-knell cries leading up to the handover from the British to Beijing 14 years ago.  And, critically, it still enjoys a legal system independent of mainland China, one which is based on English common law.

    But it’s a precious balance.

    A retrial for Nancy Kissel, a Michigan native charged with the 2003 murder of her husband, Robert, a Merrill Lynch investment banker from New Jersey started Tuesday.  His body was found bundled up in a carpet in the basement storeroom of their luxury apartment in an exclusive hillside compound overlooking Hong Kong island. 

    It was alleged back then that Kissel had drugged him with a milkshake laced with sedatives, thereby earning the case the “Milkshake Murder” moniker, and then bludgeoned him with a brass ornament.  She was convicted of murder in 2005 and sentenced to prison for life; her subsequent appeal in 2008 was rejected. 

    However, early last year, the Court of Final Appeal – Hong Kong’s highest court – overturned the conviction, citing a series of errors in the first trial.

    Although the murder case drew widespread news coverage for apparently underscoring the mix of sex, money, and drugs in Hong Kong’s expat high-life society, it’s now attracting attention for an entirely different reason.

    The value of rule of law
    “People have begun to question - because of the Kissel and other cases - whether the system is meting out equal justice to everybody,” said Francis Moriarty, an RTHK senior political reporter who also chairs the Press Freedom Committee of the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong.

    Another high-profile case involving the niece of a local judge of the Court of Final Appeal fueled perceptions that a different set of rules applies to the territory’s elites or wealthy.  Last year, Amina Bokhary was handed a one-year probation order after being convicted three separate times for assaulting police officers.  The sentence provoked an outcry in Hong Kong for its perceived leniency, particularly as it was the third time she had committed such an offence.

    Adrienne Mong / NBC News

    The Parkview residential complex where the Kissels lived commands striking views of Hong Kong.

    “People look at this [Kissel] case and say, wait a minute, if Mrs. Wong in Tin Shui Wai just under financial pressure and whatever reasons may have been…picks up the chopper and does him in, is she going to get a chance for a trial and an appeal and a Court of Final Appeal and a retrial and a stay of proceedings?” said Moriarty.  “People know that money buys you certain things. That’s accepted.  But if the disparity that’s given to the ordinary person and the justice that’s given to those who can afford it is too great, then it adds to the social tensions.”

    But others argue that the Kissel case does not show up the Hong Kong legal system in any way.  If anything, it’s the opposite.

    “This is a retrial of the whole issue, of whether or not [Kissel is] guilty of murder,” said Ian Candy, a former principal magistrate and now Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Law at the City University of Hong Kong.  “It doesn’t test the system in any way.  It’s an example of the operation of the system.”

    Nevertheless, the Kissel case is being closely watched.

    “The one thing that people hold onto here is the rule of law.  The rule of law is very important in Hong Kong, because it’s the biggest thing that separates out Hong Kong from China,” said Moriarty. “And so it’s precious.”