Lawyer Xia Lin and His times
Human rights lawyer, Xia Lin, is one of China’s bright lights. Like many of the country’s bright lights, he is behind bars.
Captured on trumped-up charges in the lead up to the state’s ‘709 crackdown’ on civil rights lawyers in 2015, Xia Lin is set for release from jail in 2024. We look back at his case in this account by journalist Jiang Xue, first published in 2016.
A gifted lawyer, Xia Lin's journey is one of a complex individual dedicated to the promise of a China the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre seemingly crushed, save an enduring spark that rupture ignited. This is the spark the Chinese Communist Party seeks to stamp out through brutality, incarceration, Big Brother surveillance, and political amnesia. This is the spark that somehow eludes the worst of that regime and its greatest threat: the spark that will one day free the entire nation and bring the Party to an end.
By Jiang Xue | First published by Initium Media on August 15, 2016
Translated by DeepL
Pictured: Xia Lin, Chinese human rights lawyer. Credit: Imaginechina.
“The lawyer who kept his distance from politics by being a ‘technocrat’ was finally drawn into the political whirlpool on the charge of “technocratization” and met the most serious challenge of his life.
At 3:30 p.m. on June 17, 2016, a five-hour trial had just ended in the fourth courtroom of the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court. Lin Ru saw her husband Xia Lin, who had been in prison for nearly 600 days.
Although the trial was “open to the public,” only six people were allowed to sit in the courtroom for the hearing. Lin Ru was not able to enter the courtroom because she was listed as a witness.1 During the five-minute meeting outside the courtroom after the trial, she was determined not to cry under any circumstances and “waste time,” but the moment she saw her husband, she broke down anyway.
Xia Lin also choked up. Lin Ru noticed that the red and white striped shirt her husband was wearing was the same one he wore on November 8, 2014, when he was taken from his home by the police, in front of his mother and children. Xia Lin told her that he has been reluctant to wear this shirt, but before attending today’s court hearing, five people in his cell helped him iron the shirt with hot water cups early in the morning.
The meeting was too short, and after a few words, the bell rang. At that moment, he suddenly pulled his wife into his arms, and before the bailiff could stop them, they embraced.
Outside the courthouse, it was drizzling. The people who came to wei guan (“surrounding gaze”)2 holding umbrellas, refused to disperse. When the police car drove out of the courthouse, they all shouted, “Xia Lin!” They hoped that their voices would be heard by the lawyer in the prison van, giving him a touch of comfort and courage. Among them were Xia Lin’s classmates and a lawyer who had come all the way from Shandong Province. There was also an old man carrying a pink water bottle who had been standing outside the courthouse all day. He is Cui Yingjie’s father. Ten years ago, Xia Lin defended Cui Yingjie, the hawker who stabbed an “Urban Inspector”3 to death, ultimately saving Cui’s life.4
A year and a half ago, in late 2014, Xia Lin worked as a defense lawyer for the arrested Guo Yushan, the founder of the famous civic think tank, “Chuan Zhi Xing” (Transition Institute). Soon after, Xia Lin himself was taken away. Several days later, his wife, Lin Ru, received a criminal detention notice stating that Xia Lin was suspected of “gambling” and “fraud” and was detained in Beijing No. 3 Detention Centre. A month after his disappearance, Xia was formally arrested on “suspicion of fraud” and transferred to the Beijing No. 1 Detention Centre.
“I am not guilty.” Xia Lin defended himself in his final court statement.
The prosecution accused Xia Lin of being involved in a case related to financial dealings between Xia Lin and friends worth more than 10 million RMB. His wife, Lin Ru, told the media that Xia had not received any notice or documents from anyone or the judiciary to demand or adjudicate such a debt before his arrest, and that Xia had sent her a message saying that if he had borrowed money from a friend, he would be able to repay it.
Xia Lin’s two lawyers, Ding Xikui and Wang Zhenyu, insisted on defending his innocence. According to lawyer Ding, the case, which was filed as a “gambling” charge and eventually prosecuted as a fraud, was a political case that was prosecuted for the sake of prosecution. Before the trial, the judge told Xia Lin’s lawyers that his trial could only proceed under three conditions: first, the lawyers couldn’t walk out of court in the middle of the proceeding as a protest; second, the lawyers couldn’t talk to the media and no media hype was allowed; third, no political defense would be allowed because Xia Lin was charged with fraud. This third condition was rejected by lawyer Ding who had dealt with similar politically motivated prosecutions. He believed that Xia Lin was indeed being “persecuted for political reasons.”
“If I don’t defend my clients politically, who will defend me politically in the future?” Mr. Ding asked.
“The color” of 1989: “I won’t be a hawk and a henchman in my life”
In 1992, at the age of 22, Xia Lin graduated from the Southwest Institute of Political Science and Law (now Southwest University of Political Science and Law) and was assigned to work for the Zunyi Public Security Bureau in Guizhou Province. In July of that year, instead of reporting to the Public Security Bureau, Xia Lin went to Guiyang to join his brother, Xia Hong, to prepare for the national bar exam that year.
“He always felt that being a police officer was dirty work,” Xia Hong said. Xia Hong graduated from Beijing University’s paleontology program, but became a police school teacher in Guizhou due to circumstances beyond his control. The day of Xia
Lin’s trial, he was the only representative of his family to be allowed in the court room to observe the trial.
After graduating from college, their father voluntarily went to Guizhou Province, one of the frontier regions in China, where he spent his life as a high-school teacher. Xia Lin, grew up there with a love of ancient poetry and a dream of being a chivalrous warrior, always wanting to help somebody for something. “I’m not surprised that he’s a good fighter for his friends,” Xia Hong said.
In 1988, Xia Lin was admitted to the Southwest Institute of Political Science and Law. As one of the five law schools directly under the Ministry of Justice, it was home to many famous Chinese jurists such as He Weifang. There, Xia Lin received excellent legal training, including the practice of criminal investigation. However, it was 1989 that had the greatest impact on him.
That year, he was just a freshman in college. He has described that black, early summer to his friends many times. In his narrative, however, there was a bit more romance.
One day in May 1989, with the demonstrations in Beijing inspiring similar outpourings across China, he and his classmates were sitting in front of Chongqing City Hall as the police were about to clear the area. The lights went off, it was dark, and drizzling. Maybe it was fear or the cold, but 19-year-old Xia Lin began to shiver. At that moment, a female senior, whom he did not know, gently embraced him from behind.
This gentle moment brought light. At that moment, more students arrived and joined the protest, then the lights came on, the square was filled with cheers, the police clearance was aborted, and the protesters had won!
As a friend, Guo Yushan has heard Xia Lin tell this story countless times. That moment was engraved in his heart, when love and darkness confronted each other, and finally light came. But this youthful triumph vanished, as short-lived as the idealism of the 1980s. When the guns went off, everything changed.
That summer, Xia Lin and his classmates took a vow together at the foot of Gele Mountain in Chongqing: “Never in my life will I be a hawk or a henchman.” He once told his friend Wang Heyan, a veteran investigative journalist, that was the moment he tore up his Communist Youth League membership card and “from then on, he was no longer a member of the Party.” Economist Wen Kejian also remembered that at a gathering at the West Lake, Xia Lin suddenly burst into tears when talking about “1989”.
In Guo Yushan’s view, the “1989 generation” became the foundation of Xia Lin’s identity. Back then, many people were pushed forward by life and the times, but some of them kept a fire in their hearts. “Xia Lin has many shortcomings, but he has never forgotten his original aspiration.”
In 1992, Xia Lin passed the bar examination and went to work for Guizhou Economic Law Firm, the only government-run law firm in Guizhou at that time, with its office in the Provincial High People’s Court. He stayed for two years. At that time, Guizhou began to pilot private law firms, so he left the state law firm with three other people and founded Guizhou Fu Zheng Law Firm, which was one of the earliest private law firms in Guizhou. He was 24 years old.
Throughout the 1990s, the economy developed, and lawyers were “in demand”. He was the legal advisor of the Maotai distillery at the time of its restructuring and was often offered good wine.
In 1995, he married Lin Ru. His wife was a beautiful, virtuous Hakka woman and his father-in-law was an old public security officer in Guizhou Province. Xia Lin, a “macho” man, did not do housework and only earned money to support his family. Their comfortable life continued day by day. In Guizhou, where gambling flourishes, “mahjong” is played for fun, and Xia Lin is no exception. One day, when he came away from the table, he suddenly saw an article by Yu Shicun on his computer: “The people of the 1989 generation have become ugly.”5 “I was in a sweat and thought I had become degenerate,” he told friends, like Guo Yushan.
This became the reason Xia Lin left Guizhou. In 2001, he went to Beijing and sent his son to a private school where he did not have to wear a red scarf. Meanwhile, Xia Lin took a postgraduate course in civil and commercial law at Peking University.
The choice of the “employer’s lawyer”: “If I’m going to (jail), you have to do your best and fix me up!”
“Xia Lin always told people that his life was led by me, but what I didn’t expect was that he ended up in jail because of me,” said Guo Yushan, 39. In September 2015, after almost a year in prison, Guo Yushan was released on bail pending trial for “illegal business operation”. By the time he was freed, his defense attorney, Xia Lin, had been in jail for 10 months.
They met at Peking University around 2001. At that time, a group of thinkers and activists in the civil rights movement were emerging on the Internet. Guo Yushan was studying for a master’s degree in political economics at Peking University, he was an active member of the Civic Life section of the Peking University’s YTHT BBS,6 as well as a leading young activist. In Mao Haijian’s modern history class, he met Xia Lin, an observer. “We had the same taste,” said Guo Yushan. “We had a lot in common.”
They both enjoyed drinking and debating. In 2014, while in prison, Guo Yushan recalled his life in a poem: “When I entered the capital on a horse, I was young and wild and light in the five mountains. The friends call for only pleasure, the wind and clouds gather to let the heroic feelings …”
Before 2004, Guo Yushan used to organize lawn salons in Peking University’s Jing Yuan, inviting independent scholars to come to the salon to share ideas with the young students. In September 2004, when the YTHT BBS was shut down, Guo Yushan and his friends met on the Quiet Garden lawn to protest. That afternoon, Xia Lin, carrying his lawyer’s card, wandered outside the waterlogged lawn.
Everyone who participated in the protest wrote a power of attorney to Xia Lin. In 2006, Guo Yushan led a group of lawyers, including Wang Zhenyu, to establish Beijing Yi Pai Law Firm, which was entrusted to the Constitutional Law and Human Rights Committee of the Chinese Lawyers Association and mainly handled cases of civil legal aid. Xia Lin became the first director of the firm. The name “Yi Pai” was derived from the English word “impact”. It means “influence,” which shows their ideal of influencing the system through their cases.
Screenshot of the Beijing Yi Pai Law Firm.
Before that, Xia Lin had been torn and almost went back to Guizhou. Guo Yushan remembers them having a farewell drink together. “In Guizhou, he called himself an ‘employer’s lawyer’ and ate and drank well, but in the end, he said goodbye to that life altogether and connected himself to the public sphere,” Guo Yushan said.
In 2007, Guo established the Transition Institute, where he undertook research on the taxi industry and taxation, and also intervened in the rescue of “stone babies”7 caused by melamine-tainted milk powder. In 2012, he participated in the rescue of Chen Guangcheng, a blind human rights activist in Shandong Province; his critical thoughts and actions went deeper and deeper, eventually leading to a prison sentence. In October 2014, Guo Yushan was arrested, and Xia Lin became his defense attorney, just as he had been a decade earlier on the Jing Yuan lawn of Peking University.
In May 2014, after lawyer Pu Zhiqiang’s arrest, Guo Yushan recalled a late summer night market where several people discussed their strategies and clinked glasses. Guo Yushan said: “If I’m going in (jail), you have to do your best and fix me up!” Xia Lin responded: “If I’m going in (jail), you have to do the same for me too!” At that moment, Huang Kaiping, a researcher from the Transition Institute, also came over and “testified” as a “witness” for them.
As they moved further and further along the path of civic action, they were well-prepared psychologically for each other’s potential situations, and for what they would be very likely to face.
Less than two months later, in the midst of the OCLP (Occupy Central with Love and Peace) in Hong Kong, Xia Lin, Guo Yushan and Huang Kaiping were arrested. The police suspected they were involved with the OCLP incident in Hong Kong.
Now, both Guo Yushan and Huang Kaiping had been released but Xia Lin, was still on trial after 582 days in jail.
Fighting only in court: “Legalizing political cases and technicalizing legal cases”
As a lawyer, Xia Lin was proud of his professional skills and often called himself a “technicalist”.8 The case of Cui Yingjie, which he represented in 2006, was considered a successful case of “technicalism” in defending public issues. Cui Yingjie, a retired military veteran, was working as a stall-keeper in Beijing to support his family. When the city police wanted to confiscate his tricycle, he knelt down and begged for permission to keep it, but was not allowed to do so. In a fit of rage, he stabbed Li Zhiqiang, one of the “urban inspectors,” to death. Afterwards, Beijing awarded the deceased Li Zhiqiang the title of “Martyr of the Revolution”. Cui Yingjie was in danger of being sentenced to death by immediate execution.
Ten years later, Cui Yingjie’s father remembers the first time he met Xia Lin, whom the family regarded as their last straw. Lin Ru remembered her son, who was 10 years old, reading the newspaper and suddenly saying to his father, “Go and help them.”
“He really poured his heart and soul into the Cui Yingjie case,” said his brother, Xia Hong. He still remembers his brother’s defense speech, which described the shortcomings of the city management system, apologized to the family of the deceased, and described the plight of the “car vendor.” “A good combination of emotion and reason,” as Xia Hong said. Guo Yushan believed that the most brilliant thing Xia Lin did in Cui Yingjie’s case was to write a letter to the National People’s Congress in advance, before public opinion was ignited, asking whether the “urban inspectors” were part of the national civil service, and received a letter in response, confirming that the “urban inspectors” were not part of the public service, making it impossible to talk about Cui Yingjie’s charge of “obstructing public service.”
Li Jin, a fellow lawyer and friend, recalls that public opinion was so heated at the time that the legal profession even held a seminar on the city management system, but Xia Lin thought twice about attending because he was afraid of angering the court and “doing his best for Cui Yingjie.”
In the end, Cui was sentenced to a suspended death sentence, saving his life, which is a good ending for a lawyer. After that, Xia Lin became more confident in his “technical” approach. “The stage for lawyers is in the courtroom,” he said with professional pride, reassuring his worried brother. “I usually don’t say too much, it’s a dueling courtroom, it’s okay.”
It was also after the Cui case that he was invited by Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer, to join Hua Yi Law Firm.
Xia Lin’s motto is: “To legalize political cases, and to technicalize legal cases.” However, his “technical” approach had little use in the Chinese context and was often criticized by those who were really involved in political opposition. The Tan Zuoren case was a typical example. After the Sichuan earthquake, Tan Zuoren, a writer who was charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for collecting details of the collapsed school, was defended by Hua Yi. Wang Qinghua, Tan Zuoren’s wife, still remembers the details of the trial.
Almost all of what Xia Lin had to say was interrupted by the female presiding judge. When she banged the gavel, announcing that the judgment would be pronounced on a later date, Xia Lin jumped up at once, pointed at the judge’s nose, and cursed in Sichuanese: “You cheated me out of my witnesses, blocking them from appearing before the court. This is an affront to the reputation of the Southwest University of Political Science and Law! Sichuan Public Security is made of the crap, why do you do their dirty work for them!”
During the trial proceedings, more than 200 people had come to wei guan (“surrounding gaze”) outside the court. Xia Lin later recalled to his friends that the people who came to watch applauded. “I was about to burst into tears, so I turned my head and went into the bathroom,” he said, proud that he had “held back the tears.”
The “pretense” of non-politics was unable to withstand a single blow
Xia Lin has represented many human rights cases but did not want to be labeled as a “human rights lawyer.” A journalist once mentioned that he was a human rights lawyer in a report, but the journalist was rebuked. Xia Lin believed that “not being labelled is the only way to protect himself.”
Li Yingqiang, founder of the Liren University, once argued that Xia Lin certainly had a clear and thorough understanding of the system, but that he had been careful not to tear his face off in his actions, attempting to maintain his relationship with the system.
He is happy to be seen to be indulging in “eating, drinking and playing.” “He always liked to play dou dizhu (fight the landlord, one of the most popular card games in China). That’s the custom in Guizhou. He liked to gamble, and I knew that was his problem. But I really didn’t expect to end up with this problem,” said Xia Lin’s brother Xia Hong.
But whether it was the “technocratic label” or the “pretense” of not getting involved in politics, the situation deteriorated. When the situation deteriorated, Xia Lin’s self-protection was not enough.
“Most of these cases, in fact, are logical. For example, in the case of Guo Yushan, it started with picking quarrels and provoking trouble, but when that didn’t work, it became illegal business,” said Liu Suli, owner of Wangsheng Bookstore and a 10-year acquaintance of Xia Lin. He said the authorities did not arrest Xia Lin on political charges, but instead dealt with him on the charge of “fraud,” which made sympathizers wary.
Liu Suli got the impression of Xia Lin: a person of “cunning” who didn’t talk much about what he did, which made him less known to the outside world: “He is a low profile lawyer who maximizes the interests of his clients and plays a first-class defense technique. As a result, his popularity does not match his dedication.
Wang Ling, the lawyer who represented Xia Lin during the investigation phase of the case, said, “The majority of cases Xia Lin dealt with were commercial cases, and the cases related to human rights were only a portion of it. He often said that he was representing corrupt officials and members of the gang, he charged them with a very high rate without mercy though.”
When a technical lawyer faces “technical” charges
On November 9, 2014, Xia Lin was arrested for a gambling incident that occurred three months earlier. Later, Xia Lin’s charges were upgraded to “fraud”. The prosecutor’s office alleged that several of his creditors were friends with whom he had financial dealings.
At first, Guo Yushan was also listed as a “victim” by the police. According to Guo Yushan, at the beginning of Xia Lin’s arrest, the police repeatedly asked him to accuse Xia Lin of fraud, but he refused. “The other people, all businessmen, who lost their personal freedom for a period of time, were under pressure to accuse Xia Lin of borrowing money and not repaying it,” the source said.
According to lawyer Wang Zhenyu, this kind of behavior, in which the authority has to “collect money” on behalf of individuals, reveals the “political character” of Xia Lin’s case. Nevertheless, the accusation of “fraud” affected public opinion of Xia Lin.
Another fact was that Xia Lin had long been a “technocrat” and had kept a distance from other “diehard” lawyers who were brave enough to speak out in the public sphere.
Since 2013, a “diehard” faction had formed among Chinese lawyers, who had been “fighting” the government in legal fora. They were also skilled at using the Internet and social media to speak out against injustice, often to the embarrassment of the judiciary. In 2013, the “Xiaohe case” in Guizhou, and the subsequent “Beihai case,” saw the rise of a group of diehard lawyers fighting for the rights of lawyers. In the view of lawyer Zhou Ze, Xia Lin had always kept his distance from the “diehard” groups and rarely participated in the process of defending the rights in which diehard lawyers had carried out in the past. In some cases, his tactics have offended some of his friends in the legal profession.
“As long as they are not scum who dance to the drums of power and influence, lawyers should put aside their differences and unite at the critical moment,” said ethics scholar Xiao Xuehui. Xu Xiao, a Chinese writer who had been following the Xia Lin case, believed that lawyers could be their own technicalists, but should definitely support the diehard faction when necessary. “I have my own opinion. But when it comes to the public space, I will always choose the path of confrontation with autocracy.”
Lawyer Wang Ling, the lawyer who represented Xia Lin during the investigation phase of the case, on the other hand, believes: “Legal people are instinctively opposed to expressing their views in the form of performance art, and the stage for legal people should be in the courtroom. You can question, but you have to talk about things, not take a predetermined position.”
“Lawyers cannot play the role of revolutionaries, but he can do one thing and that is to use individual cases to promote the rule of law. No matter how large the case is, just remember I am a lawyer. The best way is, through dealing with a certain case, to have an impact on people who know the case.” Wang said that the more difficult the environment is, the more important it is “to get yourself protected.”
Lin Ru, Xia Lin’s wife, said the police approached her twice after her husband was taken away. She was told, “Xia Lin is bad,” and, “If I were you, I would have divorced him long ago”… She asked them, “Since he is so bad, did you find out if he had another woman? The police froze for a moment. Then they replied, ‘We haven’t found out yet.'”
Recently, she’d been dreaming about him a lot. “In the dreams, he’s wearing gray, short hair, like he’s in jail, and an electronic screen has his name on it, and I’m always very worried,” she said. Her husband was meeting head-on with the most serious problem of the age. “I thought a lot, whatever the outcome, whatever the outside world thinks of him, I’m going to wait for him to come home.”
Further Reading
After eight years in prison, lawyer Xia Lin approaches his release
According to China’s law, if somebody is listed as a witness, they are not allowed to sit in the courtroom for the trial. Lin Ru was listed as a witness, but she bore witness only on paper, not in a courtroom hearing.
The “surrounding gaze,” a phenomenon in modern Chinese literature and culture, occurs when crowds of people gather around a public spectacle. Today, in the Internet age, the “surrounding gaze” has taken on a new and different meaning akin to “bearing witness”. With new communications technologies, such as the Internet and microblogs, change can be promoted by gathering public opinion through a “surrounding gaze” around certain issues and events.
Urban inspectors or urban management officers discipline unauthorized street vendors and carry out demolition and removal orders. They maintain day-to-day urban order, including the city’s appearance. One of their main tasks is to drive unlicensed street vendors away and to check all types of business permits, especially on city streets. They are not municipal employees but are hired as temporary workers. The urban management inspectors, and the system in general, has been widely criticized for its ignorance of the law and brutal enforcement.
The case was discussed in the section of “Fighting only in court: ‘Legalizing political cases and technicalizing legal cases’”.
In his article, Yu Shicun accuses the 1989 generation of abandoning their ideals for the indulgent life.
Launched on September 17, 1999, the YTHT bulletin board system or BBS site (a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program), was a very influential BBS in mainland China until it was shut down by the Chinese authorities on September 13, 2004. When the Beijing Municipal Communications Administration enforced the closure of the site, a number of professors at Peking University questioned the legality of this closure. The name of the BBS, YTHT (yi ta hu tu), represents several famous campus locations at Peking University: namely, Boya Tower (塔 Ta), Wei Ming Lake (湖 Hu) and Peking University Library (图 Tushuguan). In Chinese, yi ta hu tu also means “in a complete mess”. The founder of the YTHT BBS used the first letter of each of the above campus locations to form the name, YTHT.
The scandal began in July 2008 with revelations that the Sanlu Company’s milk products, including infant formula, were adulterated with the toxic substance melamine to make the products appear high in protein, which resulted in kidney stones and other kidney damage in infants. Based on an official report in January 2009, as many as 300,000 children affected by the contaminated milk were identified, 54,000 were hospitalized and six babies died.
Xia Lin called himself a technicalist. This meant he possessed a good knowledge of the law and the skills to defend cases in court, and to win by doing so. Despite not wanting to use the moral high ground to win his cases, as some other lawyers do, he could, at times, use morality and emotion to win a case for the defense.