A Slow Boat to China

On April 10th at 10:00, Cui Yingjie （崔英杰）was found guilty of willful murder and sentenced to death with reprieve. The verdict closed a case that had captured the attention of internet users throughout China and highlighted some of the economic tensions that face the country. While the details of the crime are rather straight forward, and not at all in doubt–one man murdered another man–the economic and political backgrounds of murderer and victim sparked a debate over what the punishment should be.

The murderer was a 23-year old peasant from Henan who had come to Beijing to eak out a living selling sausages from a bicycle-drawn cart, while the victim, Li Zhiqiang 李志强, was a chengguan 城管 (city administrator) who was confiscating Cui’s cart because he didn’t have a permit. Cui resisted, and at some time during the argument pulled out a fruit knife and stabbed Li in the throat. Cui fled all the way to Tianjin before being caught, while Li died shortly after.

The intense scrutiny focused on the case stemmed from who the key players represent. Cui Yingjie is a member of China’s rural poor, who had served honorably in the PLA for several years before being separated, and like so many in China had migrated to the cities to make a living selling odds and ends. His school and military records were exemplary, and he had no prior arrests prior to this incident. Li Zhiqiang was a chengguan, who are tasked with ensuring Beijing’s residents are legally eligible to work there. Their job is essentially impossible–unlicensed migrants in China’s cities numbers in the millions–and chengguans have become notorious for insensitivity and using violence to forcibly prevent China’s poor from earning a living in the cities.

Although the city government quickly weighed in on the case, awarding Li the title of “martyr”, the public quickly began rallying to recommend the court consider Cui’s economic situation when determining a verdict. The following is a translation of an article in the Nanfang Daily about the incident. The original is here.

“ Considering the specific conditions of Cui Yingjie’s crime and the degree of harm it caused society, we sentence Cui Yingjie to death. However, this sentence will not be carried out immediately.”

— From the sentencing statement of the Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court

On April 10th at 10:00am, the Beijing court found Cui Yingjie guilty of intentional murder and sentenced him to death, with a reprieve of 2 years. The case of “the street vendor murdering a city administrator” thus came to a conclusion.

News media were not allowed to hear the official court announcement, and were only informed of the result when Cui’s parents tearfully exited the courthouse and told the waiting reporters of the sentence. This information quickly spread to the internet.

The two defense lawyers expressed relief that Cui Yingjie would be allowed to live. One of them, Xia Lin 夏霖, said that he could accept the result. When this reporter interviewed several law professors about this result, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

Since the administrator Li Zhiqiang was stabbed to death, the fate of the murderer Cui Yingjie has been held in suspense. On December 12th, 2006, the Beijing first Intermediate People’s Court began the trial of Cui, and during the trial lawyers and the general public called for restraint in sentencing Cui to immediate death.

The family of the victim Li Zhiqiang never appeared at the courtroom, but members of the Haidian city administrator brigade attended the announcement of the sentence. After the decision, this reporter contacted the Haidian administrator brigade, where a worker said “We can’t understand why this decision was made.”

According to Cui’s father, Cui did not say a word after hearing the sentence. After the sentence, Cui tol his lawyer that he would like to appeal. “His emotional state is not very stable.” Xia Lin said that he would respect the defendant’s right to appeal, but he would wait until he researched the aftermath of the sentence before deciding.

The lawyer related that Cui Yingjie could still not accept the charges of violently resisting arrest brought against him, saying “He never resisted, I only wanted to get my cart back.” The court ruled that Cui Yingjie had used violence to obstruct the city administrator from legally performing their duties, and had willfully killed Li.

The court did not accept the reasoning submitted by Cui and his defense that he did not have subjective intent to murder. The court ruled that Cui Yingjie clearly understood that stabbing a person’s vital regions would result in death, and violently stabbing the victim’s neck without thought of the consequences and fleeing the scene of the crime displayed a lack of concern for the victim’s situation and met the specifications for the crime of intentional murder.

The sentencing statement did not explain why the court ruled to give Cui a two year reprieve.

For several days prior to the sentence, Cui’s defence lawyer Li Jingsong told Cui of several possible outcomes and hoped he would prepare himself psychologically. Cui Yingjie took a passive stance, saying that even if he could live, by the time he left prison his mother and father wouldn’t be alive and living would have no meaning.

Xia Lin told reporters that after 9 months of incarceration, Cui Yinjie’s psyche was clearly unstable, and “he hadn’t prepared well for death or for a long-term prison term. His life had been pretty good until now, and then suddenly his life turned into this. He hasn’t been able to accept this change yet.”

The sentencing statement also listed the invoice of Cui Yingjie’s confiscated items: “One pair of shoes, one pair of pants, one shirt, one spoon, a bicycle cart, and a small cooking burner.” This comprised all of Cui Yingjie’s belongings in Beijing.

After the sentence was announced, Cui Yingjie gave a message to his family through Xia Lin, saying he hoped that his older brother could return home to take care of their parents and that he didn’t stay in Beijing. Xia Lin reported that Cui cried as he spoke these words.

For the moment, I’d like to ignore the moral aspet of the case–a man killed another man and is being punished for it. The interesting aspect of this incident is how so many Chinese have rallied around Cui and argued that he not to receive the death penalty. (A two year reprieve on a death sentence often ends up as life imprisonment assuming good behavior.) Many Chinese have taken this opportunity to highlight common transgressions by chengguan, who are often tasked with controlling the numerous migrant peasants that flood into cities. On every street in Beijing you can see migrant workers either waiting for contracting work or trying to sell fruit, cheap trinkets, or otherwise profit of the tremendous wealth flooding into the city. Will the Communist Party be able to clear these people out during the Olympics in 2008?

Maybe, but is this fair? This case somewhat reminds me of the pre-Tiananmen Incident demonstrations of 1989, when a mass of students took to the streets to protest a black man’s fight with Chinese youths and quickly switched their focus to political upheaval. Cui’s case failed to have this kind of impact, but with growing tension between the rich and poor, are the emotions regarding Cui’s case an omen of things to come?

LINKS:

Lu Ning wrote an article in Chinese on why Cui Yingjie should not receive the death penalty.

Here is a great news spoof regarding the incident, in Chinese:

A series of photos showing a chengguan apparently overstepping his authority in Guangzhou (the photos are at the bottom of the page, following a good discussion of the economic tensions rising in China.)

Another page in English describing Cui’s case.