China is fairly cross with British opinion

"Execution of drug smuggler 'proper'" (China Daily headline 30 Dec) and "China defends execution - and criticizes Britain" (Shanghai Daily 30 Dec).
Britain rarely gets any press in China so to get such front page story headlines indicates the strength of feeling in China towards the British reaction to the "execution of heroin fiend" (Shanghai Daily) Akmal Shaikh on 29 December.

China is outraged by the British outrage expressed by government and media comment. A glance at the BBC news website shows the outrage expressed by politicians and the leaders of three charities: Charity MDF, The Bipolar Organisation; Sane, the mental health charity and Reprieve, the legal charity. Comments aimed at the Chinese authorities included: "a barbaric act"; "profound ignorance" and "China stuck in the Dark Ages". Would such accusations of China have been made if Mr Shaikh was not presumed to have been suffering from mental illness? Would British commentators respect the rights of the Chinese to uphold human rights in a different way to Western liberal democracies? The UK and China are both signatories to the UN Declaration of Human Rights but the Chinese tend to interpret rights more communally than we do in the West. The Chinese have pointed out that 4kg of heroin was enough to kill 26,800 people and that the execution of one man sends out a strong deterrent to would-be Chinese drug traffickers. And so the rights of the one are arguably set aside for the rights of the many who, according to a London Chinese embassy spokesman have "a deep-seated hatred" towards drug trafficking. The China Daily illustrated 'the rights of the many' viewpoint by quoting a Daily Mail message board comment by Rory from Swindon: "If you break the law you face the consequences. We don't want him serving his sentence in the UK and then getting out to perhaps committing similar offences in future." Pleas for mental illness as grounds for clemency are given short shrift by the Chinese unless historical evidence of mental illness can be provided. The Supreme People's Court approved the judgment given by the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi and said that neither the British embassy, nor Reprieve, nor Mr Shaikh's family had provided documents that proved he had a mental disorder.

China's judicial system needs reform in many areas according to its own opinion leaders. The real weakness of the Chinese judicial process is the lack of transparency that would provide transcripts of court proceedings and show the extent to which the documents provided to the court were sufficient in proving that Mr Shaikh suffered from a mental disorder and had thus been exploited by others rather than by his own design. We can't review the evidence presented to the two Chinese courts but apparently it would include a statement by Mr Shaikh that neither he nor any of his family members had any history of mental disorder. China's criminal law provides for a pardon if the defendant "had no control over his/her action".

China is offended by criticism of its judicial system by outsiders which typically resulted in a statement made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry that "no-one had the right to comment on China's judicial sovereignty". The Guardian opinion leader (30 December) says that this statement is "of course nonsense". Surprisingly, the China Daily is unconstrained in its critical comments on the Chinese judicial system recently quoting Professor He Bing at the China University of Political Science and Law as saying that China needed "independent organs to hold trials on cases between local governments and individual or group of citizens" (24 December). In another China Daily opinion leader column, Xue Yong called for a focus by the government on justice for ordinary people (China Daily, 11 December): "If the government cannot fully protect the rights of the common people, the disadvantaged groups will be subjected to oppression of the advantaged. But such things happen everywhere in our society."

Chinese foreign affairs spokespeople may also be fairly cross with China Daily's opinion too.