Is it possible to get a fair and just trial in China? I have trouble accepting this or any verdict from a Chinese court and would appreciate examples that counter this.
Is it possible to get a fair trial if you're an enemy of the state? Well... what defines fair and just? In accordance with the will of the Chinese people? Or are we talking about Western standards?
In which country is it possible to get a fair trial if you're an enemy of the state, especially in today's climate?
Regardless, it's presumably all relative. At least there's certainly an ordering of states I'd rather have against me, as a person living in them. Maybe Sweden?
Or if you don't like the child murder analogy: suppose an FBI employee decided to betray the US to the Soviets out of money, not ideology (cue Robert Hanssen). The US is at this point in time still executing traitors to the state. They grab this Hanssen-type, send him to the electric chair (on faulty evidence or simply "vibes" of guilt), but later it turns out this person was really guilty. Was this process fair?
Maybe Sweden if relatively fairer, like you said. I suspect not. But even if it was relatively fair, what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?
Really it's just about the definition of fairness or justness though. I'm not really disagreeing because I'm not putting forward definitions of my own either, but a lot of the comments here throw out the terms with some assumed meaning. For example, I'm pretty sure if you polled Chinese people, they wouldn't have a problem with the OP story's outcome. So does that make it democratic? Or good as a point of public policy? It's all a bit hand-wavey without specifying.
> what's with obsessing over Hong Kong and China if most of the world isn't fair?
Well we (I'm assuming) both live in the West and so we encounter the exceptionalist narrative of this place. Certainly HN is a Western forum. Most views of China held by people in the West are based on partial truths and thought-terminating cliches.
But that's kind of just how _people_ are the world over, no? Chinese people in Chinese forums have a parallel experience to this, just mirrored.
I too think the situation is probably mirrored from China's side. I hope there are some people over there who can also understand there's some middle ground, that neither side is totally right or wrong, and that we both perceive the world in half-truths and thought-terminating cliches.
And yes, because I live in the West (well, Latin America, anyway) I'm more upset about the distortions from "our" side. I don't really get to witness the Chinese side. I'm very skeptical even of what "our" side claims the distortions on the Chinese side are, since I don't get to witness them directly and I have reason to be skeptical of my side's narrative.
There have been a few cases of Somalis for example even killing government police/military and them being found not guilty in xeer court and even the government respected the decision.
Like USA-standards, or past-Western standards. Currently USA's law is 'did you pay the president a bribe to be pardoned'. CCP looks positively enlightened compared to that.
Since when did the Chinese people get a say? There is no way for them to express their "will" without overthrowing the communists. It's the will of Xi and that's it.
The best measure I can think of is per capita prison population. It's not great because it doesn't directly address fairness but it's likely related.
Two countries, with roughly the same "fairness" of courts, should, ceteris paribus, have roughly the same per-capita prison population. By that measure, China would be slightly on the fairer end 92nd lowest out of 224.
I don't remember if HK does the same thing but China divides their police into two groups. The more common type are basically public safety officers. They are unarmed but I saw a few places where the had plastic riot shields and catch poles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_catcher#/media/File:Mancat... The armed police are only called out as needed.
The airport had a two of military guys standing at attention with rifles. They looked like a couple of wax figures until I saw them do a formal changing of the guard.
I don't know if anyone has assembled data on actual court records. How often are police charges prosecuted? How often do they go to trial? What percentage end up getting convictions? What are the average sentences?
It would also be good to decide what we're comparing it to. A rich white person in the US can expect a very different level of fairness than a poor black person. Is a random Chinese person's experience more like the rich white persons' or the poor black person's?
What makes you ask a such question? Here are some bad ideas which comes to my mind:
* you think China is inferior?
* or maybe Chinese are inferior?
* maybe you think they always lie?
* or maybe they don't have laws?
* maybe plain old racism?
Forgive me, but your question sounds so bad. Counter question, did any of war criminals get a fair trial in the USA? (I am not listing countries they did war crimes, because there are too many)
Obviously, it is that a political opponent of the administration is facing life in prison seemingly for being an outspoken critic of the administration.
I also wouldn't call him outspoken critic either. For obvious reasons, the main one being a level of economic development unknown in human history, there isn't very much to criticize outside of politics. His gripe is solely political in that he believes that a different system of government is required (one assumes with more input from people like himself, again though he isn't a politician and, afaik, has no real political positions apart from supporting Trump and NY Post-style sensationalism/xenophobia, iirc they created a meme depicting mainlanders as locusts...it is quite funny to see people who, I can only assume, are not massive fans of Trump cream themselves over the Chinese equivalent).
If you own a newspaper and use that platform to make such a request, you're likely to attract a law enforcement response wherever you are.