..Twelve days after the Dongzhou killings, the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, has published its second story (the first had been rescinded shortly after it ran, suggesting uncertainly among propaganda officials on what spin to put on the incident).  And it turns out: the first story was largely "correct."  This newly published story suggests a consensus has been reached within the Party on how to proceed.  It appears everywhere: in Xinhua, China Daily, and People’s Daily.  This is the party line.

    It is important to keep in mind how the politico-legal system works in the PRC.  Now that the Party (and I suspect this reflects a high-level, Beijing leadership decision) has taken its stand, any legal action from here on out will be designed to confirm the official interpretation.  There will be no independent investigations, no adversarial challenge to the prosecution, no due process for the accused.  The "instigators" identified in the newspapers – Huang Xijun, Huang Xirang and Lin Hanru – have, in effect, already been declared guilty.  The only question now is what their punishment will be.  There is no chance for a fair and open judicial process.

    Also, the Party has laid down the law on the number of dead: three.   PRC censors and political thugs will now enforce this number as best they can.  They will block reports, like this one from the Times of London (hat tip, Peking Duck), which tells how villagers in Dongzhou are accusing the government of taking some bodies away and disposing of them before "counting" them.   They will punish those people in Dongzhou who bring forth information contradictory to the official line.  And they will pressure information companies (Google, et al.) to suppress any data that challenges the Party’s "truth."

    There is an ancient philosophical angle here and that is the reminder that the PRC government is thoroughly Legalist in its approach to law and politics, in modernized Leninist form.  The only means to establish order and stability, from this point of view, is through strict laws and severe penalties.  When a case becomes public, like the Dongzhou killings, it is even more important to crush those responsible, to send a message to anyone thinking of challenging the power of the ruler that they will meet a swift and brutal end.  This is the modus operandi of the CCP.

     Legalism, as expressed in Han Fei Tzu’s book, is all about preserving the power of the ruler.  Social order is good only insofar as it allows for the ruler to maintain his power; and the ruler’s power is best maintained by enforcing a very strict notion of order upon society.  There is no room here for pluralism, for democracy, for creativity.  There is only the reproduction of the ruler’s power.   And that is how the CCP is approaching the Dongzhou killings: the only thing that matters in the "investigations" and "judicial proceedings" that follow is the preservation of Party dictatorship.