Communist Party plenum faces challenges to legal reform

Officials' attitudes could be a challenge for Beijing's push for governing by law, state media said yesterday ahead of a key Communist Party meeting that will focus on legal reforms.

Announcements on the reforms, as well as the fate of several disgraced senior officials, are expected on Thursday at the end of the fourth plenum of the current session of the Central Committee that starts today.

Party-controlled media are gearing up to tout great legal progress. The party is expected to seek changes to bring a degree of fairness at the local level, where unrest, stemming from a lack of justice, has flared into violence.

But a Xinhua article yesterday, discussing how people perceived legal reforms, quoted an anonymous Heilongjiang official saying that it was people's lack of respect for the rule of law that stood in the way of reform. It added that the attitude problem was even worse among officials.

"Some local leading officials … still have strong feudalism thoughts … which leads to problems of placing power above law, and even 'I am the law'," the Xinhua article said.

Private-sector executives hoped the reforms would make the judiciary more impartial. James Zimmerman, managing partner of the Beijing office of law firm Sheppard Mullin and a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce China, said removing the influence of the party on court cases was vital.