Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, June 28, 2013

Momentum appears to have seeped out of one of the most promising Chinese legal reforms of the year: a widely cheered plan to do away with the country’s arbitrary police detention system…. Recently, for example, Chinese and foreign media alike have published vivid accounts from women prisoners at the Masanjia laojiao camp in Liaoning Province who say they were made to work long hours with little food and were subjected to torture, such as hanging by cuffs, solitary confinement in a tiny room and other cruel restraints for prolonged periods.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, May 21, 2013

If a diner in the U.S. consumes a lunch of tilapia, mushrooms and spinach, there’s a decent chance the entire meal was imported from China. And the overwhelming odds are that none of those foods were inspected by the Food and Drug Administration when they arrived in the U.S.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, April 2, 2013

China’s current crackdown on corruption and official excess, comprehensive as it may seem on the outside, mirrors many failed anti-corruption campaigns from the past. It also risks reinforcing, rather than reducing, the sense among Chinese people that corruption has become pervasive.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, March 15, 2013

Conflicts over land confiscation reflect the pressures of rural-urban inequality, the considerable dependence of local governments on land sales for financial support, the close links in many communities between local officials and businesses, widespread corruption among officials, and the increasing level of anger over violations of villagers’ interests in communally-owned land.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2013

Dog owners in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen who disobey a new law mandating the use of “pet restrooms” are subject to an $80 fine. According to another new regulation approved in Beijing late last year, children are required to visit elderly parents “often.” These and other recent legal developments – including a pair of domestic violence cases with wildly different outcomes – illustrate how unprecedented social changes in China are provoking new questions about the role of law in society.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, China RealTime Report, February 4, 2013

The arbitrary system of police detention … or re-education through labor, has fallen so far out of favor that one China police chief cited the virtues of dissent for patriotic purposes to make a case for ending it. Growing criticism of this decades-old practice is encouraging. But if official statements aren’t accompanied by meaningful legal reform, police will likely keep locking up minor offenders at will under various forms of house arrest.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2012

As China’s new generation of leaders surveys the work ahead of them, one of the most difficult questions they face is how to narrow the wide chasm between rhetoric and reality when it comes to rule of law. Few people have pushed for the narrowing of that gap as persuasively or courageously as He Weifang, an outspoken and well-known legal scholar at the Beijing University Law School who has been urging legal reform for almost 15 years through journals, the media and public lectures.  Now, for the first time, English speakers have the pleasure of being able to access He’s work in a single, carefully translated volume.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2012

The Wukan events and the lack of progress a year after they first arose suggests the extent to which the protests, the institutions involved and the stark policy issues confronting the Party-state present major challenges to China’s new leadership.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, October 28, 2012

In an era of improved communication and increasing public scrutiny, the consistently poor performance of China’s courts, which are controlled by the Communist Party, threaten to seriously undermine the party’s legitimacy. The question is whether China’s leaders would ever consider loosening their grip on the judicial system enough to solve the problems that plague it.

Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, October 19, 2012

Chinese authorities’ continued failure to control industrial pollution, combined with the growth of a NIMBY mentality among the country’s ever more affluent citizenry, is proving to be an increasingly dangerous combination. At least twice this year, China saw massive environmental protests escalate into violent clashes with authorities that made international headlines.