Now living in New York, Chinese human rights lawyer Zhang Ren practiced law for more than three decades in Beijing. After years of firsthand experience, he has begun speaking out against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), calling its legal system a “scam.”
“China needs democracy and rule of law,” Zhang told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Sept. 18.
“Under the current [political] system, the law is essentially a scam.”
Zhang began his legal studies in 1987 at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing city. He was part of China’s first generation of formally trained legal professionals following the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
Then-CCP leader Mao Zedong launched the violent mass political movement to consolidate his power and eradicate traditional Chinese culture and Western ideals of democracy and freedom. Officials, intellectuals, professionals, and other innocent people were subjected to public humiliation parades and beatings. Historians estimate that as many as 2 million people died unnatural deaths during the Cultural Revolution.
Just before Zhang graduated, student-led pro-democracy protests erupted in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Zhang joined demonstrations in Chongqing and later in Hangzhou while visiting his fiancée.
After graduating, Zhang was offered a position at the Zhejiang Provincial Procuratorate, but he declined the job. His experiences during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre led him to decide against working for institutions affiliated with the CCP. Instead, he chose to practice law independently, believing that this path would allow him to advocate for ordinary people and pursue justice.
“If a lawyer only sees the job as a way to make money, he might as well go into business,“ Zhang said. ”A lawyer must shoulder moral responsibility.”
A Legal System in Reverse
Over the past three decades, Zhang has practiced in the fields of criminal, civil, administrative, and corporate law. In recent years, he specialized in human rights defense, which had placed him on the CCP’s blacklist and resulted in withheld wages and income. His cases taught him that when ordinary Chinese people challenge the regime, due process is nonexistent.
“In administrative lawsuits—such as disputes over forced demolitions—the procedures and rights guaranteed by law are fake,” Zhang said. “The more people sue, the more injustice they suffer.
“Litigation becomes a test of [CCP] connections and money. Rule by men trumps the rule of law.”
He described China’s civil and criminal code as a “hodgepodge” of Western legal concepts but without fundamental rights. While the Chinese constitution nominally grants basic rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, these rights are nullified by restrictive regulations.
“Not a single protest application ever gets approved,” he said.
Under the CCP, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee—China’s rubber-stamp permanent legislative body—interprets the constitution and oversees its enforcement, while the Supreme People’s Court, as the highest judicial body, cannot directly adjudicate constitutional rights.
Zhang said that, unlike in Western democratic countries, China has no constitutional court to oversee the regime’s compliance. Ordinary courts also cannot cite the constitution when ruling on cases, rendering the document “a dead letter,” he said.
He cited financial scandals as an example. In the collapse of China’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, civilian investors lost billions. Yet, instead of protecting victims, the CCP authorities seized assets and threw out lawsuits, he said.
The Supreme People’s Court essentially reinterpreted the law, Zhang stated, and that civil lawsuits could not proceed while the state pursued criminal charges against wrongdoers. In other words, he said, the CCP seized all assets in question but left zero remedies for civilian investors who suffered massive losses in such schemes.
Defending Falun Gong Practitioners
In 1999, Zhang moved to Beijing, where he began defending Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was first introduced to the public in China in 1992 and quickly grew in popularity, with at least 70 million people taking up the practice by the decade’s end, according to official estimates at the time.
Fearing Falun Gong’s popularity, the CCP in July 1999 launched a brutal campaign to eradicate the practice. Since then, millions have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labor, and even forced organ harvesting.
When the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice ordered attorneys not to take Falun Gong cases at the time, Zhang continued working on them despite being subjected to police surveillance.
He said Falun Gong practitioners are “kind and decent people.” He shared that an elderly practitioner who once babysat his then-4-year-old son taught him moral values. Zhang recalled that at a young age, his son learned to offer his bus seat to others—a memory that Zhang cherishes to this day.
Zhang rejects the CCP’s propaganda against Falun Gong, including the Tiananmen Square “self-immolation” incident, widely recognized by experts as a false incident staged by the regime to turn the Chinese public against Falun Gong practitioners.
“There was no constitutional, legal, or factual basis for the persecution,” Zhang noted. “The only reason was that Party leaders felt their authority was being challenged.”
He described the persecution as the “largest wrongful case in Chinese history,” noting its extensive scope and profound impact, pointing to the state-sanctioned practice of forced organ harvesting.
“Moreover, the CCP has created the world’s greatest scandal—legalizing [forced] organ transplants,” he said. “This is something utterly incompatible with human dignity and human rights—its root lies in the persecution of Falun Gong.”
Why the Rule of Law Cannot Take Root
For Zhang, the root problem is the CCP’s authoritarian rule and its political aim to stay in power by whatever means necessary, including bending the law to achieve its objectives.
“The CCP is not a regime founded on the rule of law,” he said. “The law should be a social contract among different classes [in society]. In China, it is nothing more than the will of the ruling elite.”
He pointed out that even when construction companies sue local authorities over unpaid invoices, Chinese courts lack the authority to enforce rulings on local governments. Therefore, administrative litigation tends to focus more on making the legal process look legitimate rather than actually dealing with the issue at hand.
Ultimately, he believes that without democracy and a genuine rule of law, future generations of Chinese people will continue to suffer in a cycle of repression and violence.
“The CCP advocates violence—seizing power through violence and maintaining power through violence,” he said. “As a result, society can never be at peace.”
Li Yuanming contributed to this report.
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