A Chinese Supreme Court Justice Falls from Grace

On July 12, a Sunday, the highest level of China’s judiciary was hit by a scandal with an all-too familiar ring when China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced that Xi Xiaoming, one of the top judges in China’s highest judicial panel the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), was being investigated for corruption. The somewhat cryptic allegations, accusing Xi of “serious disciplinary violations and the breaking of laws,” mark the second time in five years that a justice for the Supreme People’s Court has been ensnared in a corruption case. Xi’s plight, grounded in fact or not, serves as an example of how difficult rooting out bad behavior can be in a country where the party is above the law, able to mete out discipline on China’s judiciary at will.

Xi (no relation to current Chinese President Xi Jinping) had spent the last 32 years shaping the way China’s courts run. Until July 12, he was the fourth-highest judge in the court, an expert in the minutiae of China’s judiciary, and an influential force in corporate and economic law. He worked as a policeman in northeastern Liaoning province before graduating from law school and starting his career as an office clerk at the SPC. He worked his way up from the court’s research office to become a judge, first in the SPC’s economics division and then its civil law division. In 2004, Xi was promoted to vice president of the SPC. In May, the court placed Xi at the head of a working group focused on overhauling General Principles of Civil Law — an effort that could fundamentally change the way Chinese citizens and businesses use the court system and interact with the law. But in July, Xi’s career finally fell apart.

The field of law in China has seen a decades-long tug of war between judicial independence and party loyalty. The allegations against Xi come in the midst of an expansive and ongoing crackdown on China’s human rights lawyers that has seen, since July 10, more than 200 lawyers detained for questioning. While most have been released, 14 remain in custody and six are still missing. While corruption cases are harder to parse than crackdowns on dissident writers or lawyers, both send the unmistakable message that the ruling Communist Party is firmly in charge. Local party bosses control judicial appointments and oversee judicial salaries and court funds; Political-Legal Committees oversee the work of the courts and are able to directly impact individual cases. Judges, also, would be wise to consider the prevailing political climate when they make their rulings. Xi is the second Supreme People’s Court judge to be felled by a corruption investigation — an influential judge named Huang Songyou was sentenced to life in prison for embezzlement in early 2010. Huang was famous for issuing the first court decision based on China’s constitution — a ruling overturned soon after Huang was dismissed from his post.

Corruption cases in China can ensnare political opponents, legitimate targets, or both, and it’s unclear into which category Xi falls. The charges brought against him, according to investigative finance magazine Caixin, have to do with the one-time richest man in the coal rich province of Shanxi, a mining magnate named Zhang Xinming. Zhang was arrested on corruption charges earlier this year, and has been nicknamed the “minister killer” for the number of officials he was rumored to be implicating during his interrogation. Zhang brought a case to the SPC in 2011 having to do with the transfer of shares in a mining operation — he had sold his shares, the mine’s value had gone up, and he wanted the shares back. Xi ruled in favor of Zhang, and Caixin implies it was because the attorney for Zhang was a contemporary of Xi’s in law school.

Like most party members targeted for corruption, Xi is now submitting to an extra-legal investigatory process called shuanggui before his case gets handed over to the court. It’s a famously opaque system from which few emerge unscathed. Xi, who has disappeared from the press since his detention, is not a flashy, media-friendly target; although he is the highest-level official to be targeted by a corruption investigation since the security czar Zhou Yongkang, public response to Xi’s arrest has been muted.

The loss of Xi is nevertheless a major one for the Supreme People’s Court. In the wake of Xi’s downfall, Caixin depicted him as one known for scholarship and hard work. Throughout his career, the SPC has published Xi’s treatises on intellectual property law, its Bankruptcy Law, its Corporate Law, and its Securities Law. “No one can fully replace his experience,” lamented one of Xi’s law professors, Wei Zhenying, in an interview with Shanghai-based The Paper. “For many people, the hopes of the civil code were all with him, because he has experience and seniority.” Without Xi, the rest of the Supreme People’s Court will continue its efforts to improve transparency, judicial independence and professionalism. “From what I know of (Xi), he is absolutely not the kind of man who would let careerism enter into the judicial process,” said Wei. “And even he could not escape.”

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