Street vendor Xia Junfeng, as depicted on the Internet

Published in collaboration with Offbeat China.

“I won’t comply!”

Those were reportedly the last words of Xia Junfeng, a street vendor who ran a kebab stall in Shenyang, Liaoning province, just before his excution on Wednesday. Four years ago, in what he insisted was an act of self-defense, Xia stabbed to death two urban city management enforcement officers — chengguan — and wounded another. Most Chinese, including many law professionals, believed Xia should have been charged with “excessive defense,” but after four years of appeals, the Supreme Court finally approved his death sentence.

In a country where the use of capital punishment is widely supported, Xia’s case has revived a heated public discussion of whether it’s time for China to abolish capital punishment. Many pointed out that capital punishment has become China’s new class divide – the death penalty is a “privilege” reserved for the powerless.

Much of the outcry can be attributed to the fact that Xia was a street vendor, and the two men he killed were chengguan, a much hated group known for abusive tactics. It’s not uncommon to hear about street vendors who have been beaten to death by chengguan officers. But when street vendors are the victims, the death sentence is seldom, if at all, applied. For example, two years ago, also in Liaoning province, three chengguan officers who beat an elderly man to death were sentenced to 11 years and 3 years in prison, respectively.

Another reason for the public’s anger is a strong sense of judicial inequality. Many compared Xia with Gu Kailai, wife of politician Bo Xilai, who murdered a British businessman. Her death sentence was “suspended,” which more likely than not means she’ll get out on medical parole sooner than later.

“If capital punishment punishes only the people, then it’s better to be abolished,” commented netizen丁来峰. “I suggest China abolish capital punishment. If you are an official, you will be sentenced to suspended life at most, even after you take hundreds of millions in bribes. If you are an official, you will be sentenced to suspended death even after you’ve murdered a foreigner. If you are an official, even a lowest ranking one, you will be okay after beating someone to death because your boss will use taxpayers’ money to pay the victim’s family off. But if you are just an ordinary citizen and you kill out of self-defense, then you will be executed.”

Many of China’s supporters of capital punishment still believe that the death penalty is necessary and point to its use in punishing corrupt officials. But Xia’s case has prompted even staunch capital punishment advocates to rethink their reasoning.

“I used to support limiting capital punishment — not full revoking of it — because I hoped that the use of capital punishment culd curb corruption,” explained 何兵, associate dean of the law school at China University of Political Science and Law. “But Liu Zhijun [former head of China Rail, charged with corruption] was exempt from death; Gu Kailai was exempt from death; while Zeng Chengjie [developer charged with a pony scheme] was executed; Xia Junfeng was executed… if the death penalty doesn’t apply to officials, it shouldn’t apply to the people, either. Call for a complete dismantling of capital punishment.”

Netizen 桃谷散人 held the same view: “I once opposed abolishing capital punishment in China, naively believing that the government would use the death penalty to punish the corrupt and save the people. But the reality is that none of the corrupt is executed, only ordinary people.” Another netizen, 谭_zoe崽崽, added, “Now I realize that in an unfair judicial system that rules by the wills of officials, capital punishment must be dismantled!”

Alia is the founder of Offbeat China, where this post also appears.

The relationship between China’s central and local governments has never been linear or completely top-down. There are times of harmony, but more often, there’s tension. In the recent past, thanks to social media, conflicts and disagreements usually kept behind closed doors have begun leaking into the public domain.

Several recent posts on Sina Weibo by legal organs revealed that tensions are as manifest today as they were during historical times. Many netizens have gone as far to call these posts an act of “rebellion.”

It all started at the end of August when Beijing suddenly intensified its Internet censorship. Celebrity bloggers on Weibo were told to self-censor. Several “online rumor mongers” were arrested. And now, anyone tweeting “rumors” that potentially harm social order and national interests can end up in jail.

As if to mock the anti-online rumor campaign, the official Sina Weibo of Guangdong Supreme People’s Court quoted an ancient Chinese story from 542 B.C., “Zichan Won’t Abolish Town Hall (子产不毁乡校).”

Zichan was a powerful politician in the Zheng Kingdom. As the story goes, officials told him that many people were gathering at town halls to discuss political issues and criticize the government. One politician urged Zichan to abolish such town halls. Zichan refused: “Why abolish them? People go to town halls to discuss the merits of our policies. I will push forward policies that they like, and adjust those they don’t like. The people are like our mentors. Criticism will decline if we try hard to do a good job, but won’t if we use power to suppress people’s complaints. Criticism is like a river. To block a river won’t work. The best way is to lead and channel it.”

Many netizens hailed the courage of the person behind the Weibo account. At the same time, they questioned how a Chinese politician from several thousands of years ago can be smarter than today’s.

As if on cue, “Zichan Won’t Abolish Town Hall” is now a banned search term on Weibo.

Guangdong’ Supreme Court has seemingly started a chorus. Quoting from history or from famous figure is common practice in China who wish to avoid direct political confrontation. More courts have since done the same.

A few days later, the Intermediate People’s Court in Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Hubei province quoted Justice John Marshall Harlan from the famous Cohen v. California case:

The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours. That the air may at times seemed filled with verbal cacophony is, in this sense, not a sign of weakness but of strength.

The lack of freedom of speech isn’t the only thing that China’s local legal organs are complaining about. The Justice Bureau of Dongguan, Guangdong province used a quote from Wang Fuzi, a well-known Chinese philosopher of the late-Ming and early-Qing Dynasties, to issue its opinion on corruption:

To severely punish corrupt officials of lower ranks, but to ignore those with similar crimes at the top. As such, the more severely the law punishes, the more corrupt cases there will be, and thus the more chaotic the country will become.

The intended goal for getting government agencies and officials on social media was to allow more open communication with the people. But what if these government agencies, or at least the employees in charge of managing these social media accounts, start to use the platform to openly voice disagreement with the central government?

Liu Guofeng, curator of the Sina Weibo account of Enshi Intermediate People’s Court, resigned a few days after the John Marshall post (though he claimed on his own Weibo that this had nothing to do with the quote).

The government can always tighten its grip on its employees, especially social media managers. But as one netizen wrote, “Suppression and prohibition won’t work in the long run.”

Alia is the founder of Offbeat China, where this post also appears.