NCJ Number
81493
Date Published
1978
Length
44 pages
Annotation
This paper examines the historical background and significance of the reemergence of the people's procuratorates in the People's Republic of China in the post-Mao period.
Abstract
In contrast to the disorder and upheaval of the last 2 decades of Mao's rule, the current leadership is emphasizing order and legality and calling for observance of the law by state organs, state and party cadres, and ordinary citizens. An outgrowth of this emphasis is the provision for a hierarchy of people's procuratorates in the Constitution adopted by the Fifth National People's Congress on March 5, 1978. Historically, procuratorates were first established in 1949 and reaffirmed in the 1954 Constitution. As evidenced by numerous reversals of court rulings and refusals of police warrants, the procuratorates exhibited considerable authority in protecting citizens' rights against arbitrariness and error in the decisions of government organs. The mid-1957 anticonservative movement, intended to strengthen Chinese Communist Party control, emphasized subordination of the procuracy to the Party leadership and excoriated the notion of the procuracy's independence. The procuratorates survived policy shifts of the 1960's with curbed authority until the Cultural Revolution, when radicals specifically attacked the prosecutorial system. Thereafter, procuratorates were gradually phased out and no mention of them appears in the 1975 Constitution. It is surmised that public security organs assumed not only the procuratorates' prosecutorial functions but also the powers of general and judicial supervision. No official or public pronouncements regarding the procuratorates exists until their reinstitution in the 1978 Constitution. Fifty-two footnotes are supplied.