Carl Minzner was quoted in a New York Times article about a new anticorruption commission that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is pushing to have established.
The new commission will also have the power to detain people for three months in secret, with the possibility of a three-month extension. This will give it the same draconian powers of detention that the current party watchdog uses solely against party members.
“This removes the fig leaf of a divide between the party and the state,” Carl Minzner, a Fordham University professor who studies Chinese law and politics, said of the draft law. “Instead of it being a step toward imposing greater legal constraints, I think it arguably represents the partial absorption of the legal system by the party apparatus.”