709 Crackdown: China’s Overt Rejection of Universal Values

(PDF with Appendix)

Introduction

            Around July 9, 2015, PRC authorities launched a crackdown, commonly referred to as the “709 Crackdown,” interrogating and detaining over 300 lawyers and rights advocates, many of whom were later convicted on charges such as “subversion of state power.” While lawyers and rights advocates have been targeted by authorities on other occasions, the scale and coordinated nature of the 709 Crackdown indicate a decisive policy shift and regression of reform efforts in several areas, including the legal profession, the judicial system, and due process rights. 

            The present analysis shows that in the decades before the 709 Crackdown, developments in the legal system and the legal profession were closely tied to official economic policies. It outlines how apparent efforts at liberalization coincided with the official goal of accessing the global economy and how China overtly rejected universal values after it had gained a firm foothold therein. Not only does the 709 Crackdown mark the end of optimism for bottom-up reform efforts, it also illustrates a multitude of violations of fundamental rights, contradicting the commitments that China made in international treaties. [Additional information pertaining to the crackdown is available in the Appendix.]

1980s: Beginning of the Modern Legal System in China

             The Chinese Communist Party began to rebuild the legal system in late 1978 following the rule of Mao Zedong, who engendered different political movements that disrupted the functioning of the legal system. Party leaders in the post-Mao era emphasized that socialist modernization required the stability and predictability offered by a robust legal framework. Among the first of such efforts was the passage of the PRC Criminal Law and the PRC Criminal Procedure Law in July 1979, both of which were nonexistent until that point. The criminal procedure law provided for some protection, at least on paper. These included mandatory judicial review of death sentences, the principle of public trial, the requirement of a warrant for arrest, and the right to legal counsel. 

            In 1982, the National People’s Congress adopted the fourth constitution of the PRC, which superseded the 1978 version and continues to be in force in 2025, as modified by subsequent amendments. The 1982 constitution removed revolutionary language, separated Party and government functions, and provided for elements of rule-based governance such as constitutional supremacy, equality before the law, and the right to legal defense. 

             The rehabilitation of the legal profession, however, was circumscribed by state control. Private practice did not exist initially, as lawyers were defined as “state legal workers” whose role included propagandizing the socialist legal system, according to the 1980 PRC Provisional Regulations on Lawyers. As state functionaries supervised by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), lawyers were primarily focused on international commerce in support of the Party’s economic reform policies. As the private sector expanded, authorities adjusted their management approach, including by instituting a legal examination system and establishing the All China Lawyers Association (ACLA) in 1986. Lawyers were prohibited from independently forming associations and were required to join the ACLA, a de facto extension of the MOJ, and which is primarily responsible for supervising lawyers’ conduct. Contemporaneously, authorities rolled out a program, initially in Beijing and Shenzhen municipalities, that created operationally and financially independent entities known as “cooperative law firms.” With increased professionalization and autonomy, the legal profession continued to grow. Between 1986 and 2001, 140,000 individuals obtained qualification to practice law, averaging about 9,300 a year. In comparison, only 1,134 people passed the bar exam in 1986.

1990s: Economic Liberalization and Legal Reform amid Rights Abuses

            As part of its effort to access the global economy, China signed several international treaties to show its commitment to upholding international law. In July 1986, the PRC government applied for admission to the predecessor of the World Trade Organization (WTO)[1] and shortly thereafter signed the Convention against Torture.[2] This gesture apparently had little bearing on the PRC government’s actual practices, as shown in part by the violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen protests. With heightened concern over China’s human rights abuses and the 1989 crackdown, the U.S. Government initially conditioned its trade relations on improved human rights practices; this policy, however, was reversed in 1994. Observers saw a retrogression of political rights in China, including the imprisonment of activists, suspension of prison access discussions, and heightened repression in ethnic minority areas. 

            In light of ongoing rights violations, some civil society groups and policymakers argued that WTO accession should be tied to concrete improvements in human rights and democratic governance in China. Possibly as an attempt to address these demands, China signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in October 1997 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in October 1998, signaling its commitment to be bound by international rights norms. While this symbolic act was persuasive to some people at the time, the PRC government continued to engage in systematic rights violations, as pointed out in a 2017 CECC hearing titled “The Broken Promises of China's WTO Accession.” Rights violations did not abate after China joined the WTO in December 2001, and the ICCPR remains unratified as of 2025. 

            Despite ongoing rights violations, PRC authorities took steps to modernize the legal system in order to facilitate their economic development agenda. Demand for legal professionals expanded following the Party’s decision to develop a “socialist market economy” in 1992, prompting an increase in the number of institutions offering legal education—from over 40 in the early 1980s to over 200 in the early 1990s. In 1993, the Ministry of Justice increased the frequency of bar exams from once every two years to once a year, which in part contributed to the number of lawyers doubling to 90,000 between 1992 and 1995.

            The PRC Lawyers Law, passed in 1996, was a milestone in professionalizing and liberalizing the legal profession within the confines of the socialist system. The law imposed formal legal education and examination requirements, thereby standardizing lawyers’ qualifications. Importantly, the law shifted lawyers’ fiduciary duty from the state to the client and defined them as “legal professionals,” as opposed to “state legal workers.” In criminal cases, Article 28 of the law codified a lawyer’s duty to “present . . . materials and arguments to prove that a criminal suspect is innocent or is less guilty than charged, or that his criminal responsibility should be reduced or relieved . . . .” Inherent in the law, however, was the tension between lawyers’ fiduciary duty to their clients and their obligation to advance the socialist legal order. This tension would later be manifested in the 709 Crackdown when the Party acted to take back the little autonomy that had been granted to lawyers. 

            Other legislative actions of note included the revisions of the PRC Criminal Procedure Law in 1996 and the PRC Criminal Law in 1997. Among other things, the revised criminal law introduced the principle of legality (i.e., no crime without law), clarified sentencing guidelines, abolished the “counterrevolutionary” offense, and defined crimes endangering state security in more detail. For the criminal procedure law, relevant amendments include the following:

• The principle of presumption of innocence was codified for the first time.
• The right to legal representation was expanded to start as early as the first interrogation, rather than at the commencement of prosecution.
• Lawyers were authorized to collect evidence and to access and copy the case file.
• The law added or clarified procedures such as the right to contest the evidence and offer a closing argument.

            The first five-year reform plan of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), published in 1999, further emphasized that criminal procedural rules must be strictly complied with. Some scholars observed, however, that incorporating these adversarial formalities did little to change the entrenched expectation in the judicial system that convictions be secured, thereby frustrating lawyers’ efforts to defend their clients effectively. Furthermore, as the 709 Crackdown showed, these procedural safeguards were disregarded especially in cases that authorities deemed political. 

2000s: Qualified Optimism for Legal Reform and Rights Advocacy

            With the Party leadership’s stated willingness to “expand orderly participation by citizens and ensure lawful democratic elections by the people,” the 2000s began with qualified optimism for reforms, as suggested by a series of official acts and rights advocacy efforts, including the following:

• In 2001, the Supreme People’s Court, relying on the constitutional right to education, determined that a victim of identity theft was entitled to recover damages from the perpetrator, who had used the stolen identity and test scores to gain admission to a business school. While this determination signaled the possibility of litigants being able to assert constitutional rights in courts, the SPC withdrew the decision in 2008 without providing a reason.
• In June 2003, the State Council abolished the “custody and repatriation” (shourong qiansong, 收容遣送) system established in 1982, which authorized law enforcement officials to remove migrant workers and homeless people from urban areas. The official act came after the National People’s Congress (NPC) had received over 20 petitions for constitutional review. One of these submissions was made by legal scholars Yu Jiang (俞江), Teng Biao (滕彪), and Xu Zhiyong (许志永), who argued that the State Council exceeded its authority because only the NPC could pass a law to restrict citizens’ personal liberty, a right protected by the PRC Constitution. This case became a landmark success in the rights advocacy movement, offering a morale boost to young legal professionals.
• In April 2004, the Wuhu Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui province ruled in favor of an applicant who was denied a civil service position because a test showed that he was a hepatitis B carrier. While the applicant ultimately was not hired (because the position had been given to someone else) and while the court did not decide the case on constitutional grounds, the case set a precedent for judicial review of government actions.
• In 2003, Xu Zhiyong and Nie Hailiang (聂海良) ran as independent candidates in the local people’s congress election in Beijing municipality. Despite lacking Party support and not being on the official ballot, they successfully relied on a legal provision that allowed nominations to be made by recommendation from at least 10 individuals. Xu and Nie won the election in which 23 other independent candidates also were able to participate. That same year, Yao Lifa (姚立法), who since 1998 had been a delegate in Qianjiang municipality, Hubei province, ran as an independent candidate but lost his bid for reelection. The fact that all 31 other independent candidates lost prompted Yao to petition the NPC to launch an investigation into potential unfair practices.
• In 2004, the NPC amended the PRC Constitution, declaring that “the state shall respect and protect human rights.” Despite uncertainty regarding the PRC Constitution’s enforceability, the amendment represented an aspirational declaration.

            Reverend Wang Yi (王怡) characterized the 2000s as “the beginning of the New People’s Rights Movement (新民权运动),” a title which would later become the Rights Defense Movement (维权运动). Many participants in the movement were not part of the intellectual elite, with some, such as Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚), belonging to a group termed “barefoot lawyers,” or legal advocates without a law degree. In comparison with previous democratic movements, such as the 1989 student protests, the Rights Defense Movement was largely pushed by activists who were concerned not with completely overhauling the system, but rather with advocating for specific rights already guaranteed within the current system. As Xu Zhiyong explained, he and other legal reformers “hope[d] to work in a constructive way within the space afforded by the legal system [to bring about] concrete but gradual change . . . .”[3]

            Said gradual change, however, was at times reversed, as illustrated by the closure of two organizations co-founded by Xu Zhiyong. These organizations focused on promoting constitutional reforms and providing legal assistance on issues such as arbitrary detention, forced evictions, public health, worker rights, and electoral activities. Both organizations eventually ceased operation: One of them was deregistered due to state security concerns, and the other was accused of tax evasion (despite being non-profit) and was ordered to pay a substantial fine. Subsequently in 2012, Xu launched the New Citizens Movement (新公民运动), but its core members, including Xu, Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), and Zhao Changqing (赵常青), were sentenced to prison terms in 2014. 

            Frustrated by the lack of genuine rule of law and constitutional governance, legal scholars including Zhang Zuhua (张祖桦) and Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) in 2008 led the drafting of the constitutional reform manifesto known as “Charter 08.” Initially signed by over 300 individuals and later joined by many more, Charter 08 “calls not for ameliorative reform of the current political system but for an end to some of its essential features, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy.”[4] Authorities, as threatened by the goals of the charter, launched a nationwide investigation to “root out the organizers.” Liu was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in prison and later died in 2017 before completing the prison term.

2010s: Overt Rejection of Human Rights and Democratic Principles under Xi Jinping

            The rejection of universal values became an ideologically coherent position under Xi Jinping. Though initially kept as an internal matter, this stance was publicly asserted through actions like the 709 Crackdown. After taking office in 2012, Xi Jinping developed his security-focused policies as informed by external unrests including the Jasmine Revolution that began in late 2010. In a leaked 2013 internal Party document titled “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” (commonly known as Document No. 9), Party leadership rejected constitutional democracy, universal values, and other elements essential to democratic governance as being at odds with socialism, the Party’s ideological foundation. Viewing “Western values” as an incitement to color revolutions in China, the Party essentially treated the promotion of democracy and human rights as a security threat. 

            Security concerns were renewed after the widespread protests in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2014, which prompted authorities to tighten ideological control, including by prohibiting universities from covering Western values in the curriculum. About a month before the 709 Crackdown, in June 2015, state-run news outlet People’s Daily ran a page dedicated to criticizing color revolutions and arguing how a democratic system could not be transplanted to China. 

            Authorities perceived people involved in collective efforts, including peaceful advocacy, as potential agents for a color revolution. In sentencing rights advocate Wu Gan (吴淦)—who received eight years in prison in the 709 Crackdown—the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court cited a March 2014 incident in which lawyers and rights advocates organized a protest outside a detention facility, known as a “legal education base” (fazhi jiaoyu jidi, 法制教育基地), in Jiansanjiang, Jiamusi municipality, Heilongjiang province. The court wrote—

            Sharing the view of “toppling the wall,” lawyers, “citizens,” and petitioners connected with one another on [social media platform] WeChat. In every case, it is the lawyers who initially provoked trouble and rushed to the scene. “Citizens” and petitioners followed up and continued to sensationalize and escalate the situation. This became a standard mode of operation. The purpose was to subvert the existing legal system and topple the Communist Party’s leadership in order to carry out a “color revolution” and “peaceful transformation.” 

            The demand made by the protesters was in fact much narrower in scope—they had gathered to ask for the release of four rights lawyers and nine other people who had advocated for Falun Gong practitioners detained at the facility. Their advocacy was not frivolous, as it led to the closure of the facility and the termination of several officials; but Party authorities apparently saw the coordinated citizen efforts as a political threat. 

            The Party’s security concern extended to religious practitioners, as shown by the prosecution of underground church leader Hu Shigen (胡石根) who was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison. Authorities accused Hu of using religious activities as a platform to plant subversive ideas in the minds of lawyers and petitioners who were dissatisfied with the political system. One of the people who the prosecution said was influenced by Hu was Gou Hongguo (勾洪国), whose advocacy addressed unlawful land acquisition and residence demolition carried out by government officials. 

            An alleged coconspirator of Hu Shigen in the “criminal syndicate” was lawyer Zhou Shifeng (周世锋), the head of the Fengrui Law Firm. Authorities published Zhou’s case as a model case and as a warning to others: 

            The public trial of the case in accordance with the law has drawn three bottom lines for the lawyers: First, no one is allowed to use their status as a lawyer or use a law firm as a platform to sensationalize cases, attack the socialist system, or engage in activities that endanger state security. Second, no one is allowed to use their status as a lawyer to plan, instigate, or organize relevant interest groups to interfere with or undermine the normal social order. Third, no one is allowed to use their status as a lawyer to teach or instruct parties to interfere with normal judicial activities.[5]

            The authors of the model case did not describe any specific act that Zhou had committed; rather, they considered the promotion of democratic values to be inherently criminal as a divisive tactic used by anti-China forces.

709 Crackdown: Subversion of Universal Values

            The 709 Crackdown can be viewed as the Party’s overt rejection of human rights and democratic principles. In addition, the crackdown lays bare the Party’s subversion of the following universal rights enshrined in international treaties.

Arbitrary Detention and Restrictions on Personal Liberty

• PRC authorities imposed lengthy prison terms on lawyers and others for their peaceful rights advocacy, a violation of the ICCPR’s protection against arbitrary detention. Authorities employed plainclothes individuals (who may or may not have been government employees) to conduct surveillance on targets even after they had completed prison terms. For example, the wife of lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) in 2019 reported that “20 or so government-hired minders watch Jiang Tianyong around the clock outside his parents’ house. Surveillance cameras were installed, and a shack was built for the guards at the entrance of the alley leading to the family premises.”

Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, and Home

• By pressuring landlords and school administrators, authorities indirectly carried out forced evictions and involuntary termination from schools, which substantially disrupted the normal lives of 709 victims and their family members despite the lack of any criminal liability on their part. For example, in 2016, police ordered kindergartens in Shijingshan district, Beijing municipality, to not accept Wang Guangwei, the son of lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋). When Guangwei began primary school, police again exerted pressure on school officials, resulting in him being forced out of school again. 

Violation of Right against Self-Incrimination through Televised Confessions

• During his detention that began in 2015, rights advocate Zhai Yanmin (翟岩民) confessed on national television on three occasions admitting to wrongdoing and discrediting his colleagues. In 2016, Lawyer Wang Yu (王宇) also gave a televised confession in which she denounced fellow lawyer Zhou Shifeng and pledged loyalty to the PRC government. Both of them confessed under duress. In particular, Zhai later revealed that he was forced to read from a script after officials deprived him of sleep in solitary confinement and had threatened to harm his son.

Denial of Legal Counsel and Retaliation against Lawyers

• Victims of the 709 Crackdown were routinely denied adequate access to legal counsel, and their lawyers also faced persecution, including license revocation and criminal prosecution. In the case of Xie Yanyi (谢燕益) and Liu Sixin (刘四新), authorities pretextually claimed that both had fired the lawyers retained by their families and had hired new lawyers. In denying them legal counsel, authorities also prevented them from accessing the case files, creating an additional lawyer of opacity.
• Lawyer Li Jinxing (李金星), whose office was raided during the crackdown, had his law license revoked in 2019 in part because he protested a court’s decision enjoining him from copying the case file of his activist client Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄). Li was well-known within the legal profession as having successfully overturned several wrongful convictions.
• Likewise, lawyer Li Yuhan (李昱函), was sentenced to a lengthy prison term in October 2023, over six years after her initial detention in 2017 and over two years after her trial. Although the official charges were unrelated to her legal practice, those familiar with the case believed authorities prosecuted her in retaliation for having represented Wang Yu and other defendants in what they deemed to be politically motivated cases. 

Torture

• One of the most egregious rights violations that 709 Crackdown victims suffered was torture. Despite a 2012 amendment to the PRC Criminal Procedure Law prohibiting torture and the obligations under the Convention Against Torture, PRC officials reportedly subjected multiple detainees to torture for the purpose of extracting confessions.
  • Family members of rights lawyer Li Chunfu (李春富) reported that he returned home in January 2017 in a severely altered physical and mental state, exhibiting paranoia and schizophrenic behavior as well as having damage to his neck and spine. Li told his wife that authorities had drugged him daily for the first portion of his detention.
  • According to a 2017 report, lawyers Wang Quanzhang and Li Heping (李和平) had been tortured by electric shock to the point of fainting during the period they spent in a form of legalized incommunicado detention known as “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL). Li Heping’s wife also said that authorities had forcibly medicated Li for 22 months with a drug that caused “muscle pains, lethargy, and blurred vision” and shackled him for a month in such a way that he could not stand upright. Other reports from this past year described additional instances in which authorities administered medication as a means of torture.
  • In January 2017, Xie Yang (谢阳) told his lawyers that during the portion of his detention spent under RSDL, authorities deprived him of sleep, interrogated him for periods of over 20 hours, forced him to sit on stacked stools, punched him, kicked him, and kneed him in his abdomen and lower extremities on multiple occasions. Xie noted that officials carried out these actions directly under the camera in the room to avoid being recorded. Xie also identified over 20 officials who participated in his abuseand revealed that officials repeatedly pressured him to confess and to keep quiet about his torture. Xie said in a letter that he reported the torture to two procurators, but they did not make a record of it. 

Genuine Constitutional Reform Needed for Rights Protection

            Since the Reform and Opening Up era in the 1980s, legal reforms in China were focused primarily on facilitating economic developments. Reforms in criminal justice were either disingenuous or poorly implemented, especially in cases deemed political. The 709 Crackdown represents a breach of the commitments made in international human rights treaties and one of the first steps taken by the Party in asserting its supremacy under Xi Jinping’s leadership. While lawyers and rights advocates were intent on protecting people’s basic rights, the Party saw their efforts as a political threat. Not only were these lawyers and rights advocates effective in sparking public discourse on social issues, thereby diluting the Party’s influence in this space, they proceeded on the premise that personal rights took precedence over official actions. Potentially exposing the Party to challenges within the court system and beyond, rights lawyers were cracked down on for refusing to serve as instruments of the state. 

            Following the 709 Crackdown, the Party asserted its exclusive leadership in the 2018 constitutional amendment, which represented a step backward in constitutional governance because the Party—and by extension Xi Jinping—is in effect placed above the law. The 2018 amendment is the opposite of what Liu Xiaobo and others advocated for in Charter 08; that is, removal from the PRC Constitution of provisions that are inconsistent with the principle of popular sovereignty. Given that democracy and human rights are intertwined, unless the Party’s political power is rendered non-exclusive, there is little chance that legal professionals will have any positive impact on rights protection going forward. 

            At the tenth anniversary of the 709 Crackdown, global advocacy efforts should continue to denounce ongoing rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party and curb the spread of authoritarian ideals around the world.