Sieren's China: The emperor's gray clothes

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http://www.dw.com/en/sierens-china-the-emperors-gray-clothes/a-18582100

With its new security law, the Chinese government is opening the floodgates to arbitrariness, says DW's Frank Sieren.

Sieren's China: The emperor's gray clothes
Frank Sieren
13.07.2015

Such a law was not necessary. What is now allowed was already possible - the arrest of people that the state believes could disturb public order. Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned for 11 years on charges of "inciting state subversion," while the Uighur professor Ilham Tohti was given life imprisonment for "separatism" and the journalist Gao Yu, who has worked for Deutsche Welle, was sentenced to seven years in jail for "disclosing state secrets."

Clearly the hardliners in the government are strong enough to insist upon a formal change and to make their success as visible as possible. Before, they would simply do it, whereas now they are allowed to do it officially. They can "resort to all necessary measures to ensure state sovereignty and harmony."

They struck immediately: At the end of last week - barely a week after the security law was published - over 50 human rights activists and lawyers were arrested or summoned or disappeared in a nationwide raid. Without any official explanation. They included the lawyer of the Uighur professor and Zhang Miao, a journalist who has worked with German weekly "Die Zeit." She was released almost immediately without charge.

Why now?

Who is behind this? Does it indicate a change in the power relations within the leadership? Is this a concession allowing more space for maneuver with regard to economic reforms? Is the law a compromise that the hardliners are using to arrest lawyers on their own authority? Or are the arrests in the interest of the leadership, even that of Xi Jinping, the head of the state and the party, who in view of the big reforms and the economic situation wants to have stability at all costs?