Jiang Ping, the ‘conscience of the Chinese legal world’, dies at the age of 92

Jiang Ping, a legal scholar who helped lay the foundation for China’s civil code and whose experiences with political persecution shaped his relentless advocacy for individual rights in the face of state power, died on December 19 in Beijing. He was 92.

His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by the China University of Political Science and Law, where he had been president and a longtime professor.

Often called “the conscience of China’s legal community,” Mr. Jiang emerged in the 1980s as a highly regarded teacher and leading scholar, one of four professors who helped oversee the drafting of China’s first civil rights framework . His reputation was enhanced during the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests, when as university president he publicly supported student demonstrators.

After the government crushed the protests and massacred demonstrators, Mr. Jiang was removed from the university presidency. But he remained extremely popular on campus. Even after his removal, law students wore T-shirts printed with one of his most famous refrains: “Bow only to the truth.” And his words – “rule of law for the whole world” – are engraved there on a stone.

In the foreword to his 2010 autobiography, Mr. Jiang outlined two qualities that he believes are important for Chinese intellectuals: “One is an independent spirit that does not succumb to any political pressure and dares to think independently. The other is a critical mind,” he wrote. “My only wish is to seriously inherit these two qualities,” he added.

His moral authority was enhanced by his own story. In the 1950s, as a young teacher, he was branded an anti-communist after criticizing the government for excessive, top-down bureaucracy and being ordered “reformed,” as the government called it, through labor. He was not allowed to teach law for twenty years. And while he was at work, he was hit by a train, leaving him with a prosthetic leg.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as China began to recover from the chaos of Mao’s rule, Mr. Jiang returned to his quest for reform, taking on teaching and administrative positions at the university and serving as a senior member of the Chinese legislature. deputy director of the legal committee. In addition to the civil rights framework, he helped shape China’s property law, contract law, and corporate law as the country moved toward a market economy.

But it was in the decades after Tiananmen, when he no longer held official or university positions, that he made the most sweeping calls for change. He argued that human rights and constitutional democracy were inseparable from the property and commercial rights he had helped establish. He signed for open letters criticize censorship. When Beijing cracked down on hundreds of human rights lawyers in 2015, Mr. Jiang said said that all of Chinese society should be concerned about protecting lawyers as watchdogs.

In recent years, as the rule of law has retreated even further under China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, Mr. Jiang has continued to lecture widely.

“He was the legal mentor of our time, and the legal mentor of our people,” said He Weifang, a prominent Chinese legal scholar and a former student and friend of Mr. Jiang.

Jiang Ping was born Jiang Weilian on December 28, 1930 in Dalian, a city in northeastern China. His father, Jiang Huaicheng, worked at a bank and his mother, Wang Guiying, was a housewife.

He enrolled at Yenching University in Beijing to study journalism, but dropped out to work for the Chinese Communist Party, which recruited students in its fight against the ruling Kuomintang in China’s civil war. He changed his name to protect his family.

Two years later, in 1951, the new communist government sent Mr. Jiang, along with a group of other students, to the Soviet Union; Mr. Jiang was assigned to study law and obtained a bachelor’s degree. While there, news emerged of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror. Mr. Jiang said this was one of his first indications that socialism in name alone did not guarantee freedom from tyranny. He decided to continue working for freedom after his return to China.

But his return in 1956 to teach at the Beijing College of Political Science and Law, later renamed the China University of Political Science and Law, coincided with a campaign to quash criticism of Mao. Mr. Jiang, like many other intellectuals, was labeled an enemy of socialism and sent to the outskirts of Beijing for labor. His wife, whom he had married a month earlier, divorced him under political pressure.

One day, exhausted while dragging steel wires across a railway line, he did not hear an approaching train. His leg was shattered.

In 1978, after the Cultural Revolution – another Mao campaign to consolidate power – the government’s persecution of intellectuals ceased. As Beijing tried to rebuild its education system and reconnect with the outside world, Mr. Jiang returned to teaching law at university.

He lamented the lost decades, but was never bitter. “Adversity gave me the opportunity to meditate and look back, and look at things calmly,” he said during his 70th birthday celebration. “There was nothing left to blindly believe in.”

Mr. Jiang rose quickly after his political rehabilitation. He oversaw not only the drafting of civil and commercial laws, but also China’s first Administrative Dispute Law, which gave citizens a limited right to sue official bodies for misconduct.

In 1988 he was named president of the university. The following spring, protests broke out in Tiananmen Square. Mr. Jiang, fearing bloodshed, sat on the ground at the campus gate despite his bad leg and begged the students not to go.

When the students were still going, Mr. Jiang extended his support. Together with nine other university presidents, he signed an open letter urging the government to enter into dialogue with students.

After his expulsion in 1990, Mr. Jiang remained as professor. A passionate teacher, he once said that he considered himself more of a legal educator than a scientist.

Even though he presented himself as a steadfast voice for reform, he was careful not to cast himself as an opponent of the party. While some of his top students were imprisoned or blacklisted for their advocacy, Mr. Jiang was still invited to report to China’s Supreme Court.

“Jiang did not seek martyrdom and knew how to express his contempt for the dictatorship without going to prison,” said Jerome A. Cohen, a law professor emeritus at New York University.

Although he refrained from open confrontation, Mr. Jiang was quick to point out what he saw as the authorities’ inconsistencies and consistently refused to do anything that betrayed his values.

“He didn’t go against his own nature for the sake of his influence, or against his bosses, or against the propaganda cameras,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a former student who became one of China’s leading human rights lawyers.

Ultimately, he said, Mr. Jiang had maintained a “normal mentality” amid vastly changing circumstances. “But I don’t think there are that many people in the next generation who can do that.”

Mr Jiang’s second wife, Cui Qi, died in July. He is survived by a son, Jiang Bo, and a daughter, Jiang Fan, as well as an older sister, Jiang Weishan, and two grandchildren.

Mr. Jiang’s famous optimism began to waver in recent years as the political environment deteriorated. But he never lost his passion for teaching younger generations about the possibilities of the law, speaking to students until his final days.

“We must have a spirit of tolerance, that is, to what extent can we compromise with reality?” Mr. Jiang told a Chinese publication in 2009. ‘Don’t feel bad about making compromises. Time will slowly change everything.”