Xuzhou

Chapter four examines the lawsuit submitted by Wang Peirong, an associate professor at the China Mining University, against the city government of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province. After Wang and thousands of other faculty and staff moved into their new university-built apartments in 1999, they found that the anti-theft doors of their apartments were defective and virtually useless. As a result, many tenants lost personal property to thieves. When infuriated homeowners elected Wang to complain to the local government, local officials simply ignored the complaint.

Wuhan’s Showdown at the Supreme Court

Chapter three continues the discussion of the case at the Supreme Court in 2002. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court swiftly dismissed the lawsuit. The chapter also looks at the many just and natural resistances practiced by Waitan Garden residents to safeguard their licit homes. After all their efforts ended in vain, these staunch defenders finally realized that the CCP local government had gained full control of their city, and that the Party was too powerful in China for the law to win.

Waitan Garden

Chapter two shows that the Wuhan homeowners, believing in their legitimate documents and rights, organized committees and fought a tug of war with local governments over compensation. Local officials began taking illegal forceful means to intimidate the homeowners, including secret arrests, detainments, and other covert pressures. After repeated failures in persuading lawyers in both Wuhan and Beijing, the residents finally managed to find two audacious local lawyers to accept their case against the city government. The lawsuit filed collectively by over 100 Wuhan residents became the “first administrative lawsuit in 21st century China.”

Introduction

The Introduction begins with a study on the role of the legal system as a knife hilt in the communist China. It then traces the historical root of the role of law as a tool in imperial China during which even enlightened rulers such as Tang Taizong would sometimes violate law because the compliance of law largely depended on rulers’ self legal consciousness and not the enforcement.

Professor Wang’s Costly Battle against Local Power

Chapter five studies another case of Professor Wang in which he was involved in a bloody fight against the head of the Neighborhood Committee of Fenghuayuan, Liu Yongxiu. Although Liu did not have much power, he had powerful backing from local governments. Responding to Wang’s accusations that he had embezzled a large sum of public money belonging to all residents, Liu launched a ferocious battle against Wang. After Wang began shifting his focus of charges towards the powerful mayor, the situation shifty turned unfavorable to Wang. In the local court, Liu sued Wang for slandering, resulting in Wang’s 18 month imprisonment.

Conclusion

The Conclusion highlights the main arguments in each chapter and uses “the legal asymmetry” to demonstrate the inequality of law between citizens and powerful officials. While local officials could violate law at will without fear of being punished, ordinary people had to adopt mainly legal methods to defend their legal rights. It is because the law is under control of political power and there is no the rule of law.

Shanghai and Chongqing

Chapter six examines urban power abuse from a different perspective by examining the law violations and downfalls of two powerful local Party chiefs: Chen Liangyu in Shanghai and Bo Xilai in Chongqing. Both of them had abused their powers during their tenures as local leaders in which Chen sentenced a lawyer who had tried to help victims of coerced relocation, while Bo Xilai, more prominent than Chen, had adopted mainly illegal means such as tortures and perjuries to extract confessions from the alleged criminals and punish lawyers who had dared to challenge their policies. The fall of both men had nothing to do with his massive infringements of the law but was largely due to a lost power struggle. Despite the vocal support of law in the official charges of both Chen and Bo, law remained a tool of whosoever had more power.

Urban War at the Yangzi River

Chapter one looks into the lawsuit submitted by many Wuhan residents against their city government. Although the residents, most of whom were affluent homeowners, all had lawful certificates when they bought their new apartments along the Yangzi (Yangtze) River in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the local government demanded immediate evacuation from their new homes in 2001. The fierce fight between preserving and demolishing their buildings would last for 130 days.