Originally published in Italian by Formiche.net
The silent slaughter happening in Cold War II between China and the USA is that of the rule of law, the absolute primacy of the law, theorized by Cicero (legum servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus) and applied in political practice since 1200 with the Magna Carta that required King John Lackland to respect the rules of “due process” – and therefore to stop throwing people in jail on a whim. The rule of law is the pillar of Western democracy. It guarantees a country’s democratic stability and “cuts” the world in two: freedom, on one side, might on the other one.
In a paradoxical inversion of sense, however, the U.S. turns into a news the mere charges against four Chinese researchers who, having not yet been convicted, are still protected by the presumption of innocence . China, for its part, complains about the violation of the human rights of its citizens committed by the U.S. However, in China, the fǎ zhì is read not as “rule of law” (法制) but as “rule by law” (法治). The two ideograms are pronounced almost in the same way but have a profoundly different meaning (see the seminal essay by Ignazio Castellucci “Rule of law and legal complexity in the People’s Republic of China” published by the University of Trento). The first ideogram translates “law as a system”. Therefore a concept similar to the Western “rule of law”. The second ideogram translates “law as an instrument” and therefore subject to the will of power. It is difficult, therefore, to speak of China as fostering the supremacy of fundamental rights, but it is precisely the violation of fundamental rights that China invokes about the charge of its researchers. Continue reading “USA, China and the rule of law”
