Thank you.
When I mentioned that abuses are often justified by reference to the Chinese legal system, that's true. When we look at the imprisonment of people like Hu Jia, for example, that is justified by reference to Chinese law. I think that should give us some pause when we assume that the text of Chinese laws, whether they be on open governance or human rights conditions.... They put human rights protection into the constitution, but they qualified it by reference to socialism, which then includes party power and so on. The legal system works differently there than we might expect a rule-of-law system to work; the abuses are often justified by reference to law. However, this itself is a major change from 20 or 30 years ago.
I would like to return to the role of lawyers, which is the other question you mentioned. Lawyers are less easily controlled. They're more assertive. Therefore, they're more of a challenge to the government now than they were 10 years ago.
I didn't go through my bio at the beginning of my discussion, but you have a copy of my c.v. I won't belabour the point, but I've been involved with Chinese courts and lawyers for quite a long time. I can assure you that 10 years ago Chinese lawyers were largely irrelevant to the issue of human rights in China, whereas today they are really in the forefront. That is why the regime has felt it necessary to try to put pressure on them to restrict their behaviour.
It is in one way regrettable that the regime is doing that--and I would agree with that, certainly--but at the same time we can see progress in the importance of law and legal institutions and lawyers. That shows a broader systemic evolution, which I think is driven by China's internal needs and by the internal social, economic, and political pressures.
That brings me to the last point. I would say that virtually all of the progressive changes we have seen on human rights in China have originated within China but have been supported by quiet help from abroad. When there is public pressure from abroad, the response of both the government and many people in China is essentially to close off discussion and say don't lecture us. But where there are needs that are identified domestically, and where Canada and other counterparts are assisting in a quiet and discreet way, that has been the source of virtually all of the human rights progress. So I think that contextualized engagement is still more effective than public criticism.