echognomics [he/him]
Nah, it’s funny even if Trump leaked documents for personal profit or due to general incompetence. Maybe funnier, since it’s Uncle Sam tripped up by an individual idiot perfectly embodying the nation’s core capitalist qualities of rapacity and hubris
Also, it doesn’t really matter if Trump didn’t do it for ideological or moral reasons. Nobody in the colonised world cares too much about how imperial hegemony is disrupted, so long as it is.
That interpretation sounds like a plausible socially progressive reading of the law, given that there’s a proviso to address cases where a person rapes a military spouse “by means of violence, coercion or other means” (it refers such cases to Article 236, which concerns cases of rape by violence or coercion in general). One could argue the addition of this proviso implies that the entire article is intended to be read as a law to protect the welfare of military spouses, addressing different ways a man could take advantage of a lonely military spouse, either by dishonest seduction (dishonest because conviction under the law requires proof of the man knowing that the woman is already married), or by force/abuse of position. The relevant clause of the Chinese criminal law code reads:
第二百五十九条 明知是现役军人的配偶而与之同居或者结婚的，处三年以下有期徒刑或者拘役。 利用职权、从属关系，以胁迫手段奸淫现役军人的妻子的，依照本法第二百三十六条的规定定罪处罚。
Article 259: Anyone who cohabits with or marries a spouse of an active-duty serviceman knowing that the spouse is the spouse of an active-duty serviceman shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention. Anyone who uses his power or subordinate relationship to coerce and rape the wife of an active serviceman shall be convicted and punished in accordance with the provisions of Article 236 of this Law.
Of course, the broad way that the law is phrased reveals big blindspot in the provision, as it kinda fails to consider or address a possibie situation where a military spouse could or would want to exercise agency by actively seeking out affairs while their spouse is deployed.
Edit: Actually, upon reading the criminal law code further I realise that it also contains a general criminalisation of bigamy in Article 258 (anyone “who has a spouse and commits bigamy, or who marries another person knowing that the other person has a spouse” can get up to two years imprisonment). So, I guess in cases where a military spouse actually remarries while the soldier is deployed, that would also open her (or him/them) up to some criminal liability. However, if she’s “merely” having an affair, or cohabiting, she’s technically not liable for any crime. Which means, on a structural level, the law is a little more lenient on the military spouse as compared to the jody. This further supports the argument that it’s more accurate to read Article 259, which addresses only the person seeking to marry or cohabit with the military spouse, as theoretically aimed at protecting military spouses from being taken advantage of while their husbands are deployed instead of it being a law meant to punish military spouse infidelity, since it distinctly doesn’t seek to punish the cheating military spouse like Article 258 does for general bigamy. If Article 259 was intended to punish all military spouse infidelity, it logically would need to treat both the military spouse and the person they cheated similarly.
Yeah. A Chinese court can probably easily differentiate between “recognising” a factual instance of bigamy (or in this case, lesbian cohabitation) while still treating it as an illegal act, and “decriminalising”/“legalising” a practice by court judgment. I would assume that any legal system would inherently need to be able to do the former without necessarily overreaching into the latter, because if that ability isn’t there then it may be theoretically possible to perversely argue that judges actually cannot impose derivative criminal libilities or pass sentences on convicted persons because courts should not recognise (i.e., legalise) a crime by doing so. In general, arguments along the pattern that a civil case cannot be won because a requirement of the relevant civil law concept is already criminal act are inherently silly, since nobody is going to argue that a civil case to get compensation for physical battery cannot be found because battery is also a criminal offence. It’s the literal/plain meaning rule being taken to the dumbest conclusion, i.e., the cases you teach in law school (if such cases exist) to show why concepts like the mischief rule/golden rule/purposive approach are necessary.
In fact, the current situation is probably a weaker case than the bigamy example that you provided, given that unlike bigamy, “cohabitation” (or infidelity) is not even a criminal act per se, just a criteria to tick so as to fulfil other legal liabilities. So, the court can easily just say "we recognise that people sometimes have gay/lesbian relationships outside marriage, and that for LGBTQ people such relationships fit under the definition of “living as if husband and wife” without seriously worrying that somehow according to some crazy literalist interpretation they’ve created gay marriage. Somehow I don’t think LGBTQ activists in China would view that as commendable and actual progress towards legalisation of gay marriage.
Hmm, the person tweeting this (as far as I can tell, they’re not living in China currently, and is some 1st gen Chinese Canadian YA author who writes Chinese history-inspired fantasy/SF) provided some “elaboration” on the alleged situation:-
The source is from a Chinese lawyer. The law about “ruining a military marriage” specifies committing bigamy or cohabitating with a military spouse, and cohabitation is currently defined as “living as if husband and wife”
If the court wants to charge these women they are then recognizing that two women can legally have a relationship as serious as that of a husband and wife
(responding question whether the cheating couple is being imprisoned) No the soldier is threatening to sue the women unless they give him 200k RMB (27k USD) but they are threatening to counter-sue him for extortion. So right now it’s just threats. Even the lawyer I saw this from doesn’t know how a court would rule in this case.
Not sure about the anonymous “Chinese lawyer” source that they’re relying on, and I can’t find a news source reporting on this case; elsewhere in the thread they posted an SCMP article, but it was about a “coventional” heterosexual jody case from earlier this year). Be that as it may, on first glance, the purpoted legal logic doesn’t seem to be completely without legs to me? If cohabitation is legally defined as “living as if husband and wife”, it seems at least arguable (not saying that it’s an argument that Chinese courts will definitely accept) that the court cannot legally recognise a “lesbian cohabitation” situation without first recognising the concept of a marriage/legally-recognised union between two women?
Article 150 covers bringing the party into disrepute by living too egregious of a conspicuous consumption hypebeast lifestyle. So it’s actually the “party members shouldn’t bring the party into disrepute by buying so many gold-plated Bugatti Veyrons that normal people are beginning to notice/complain” clause.
Technically the “don’t get caught at strip clubs” clause is Article 151. Actually, to be serious, it’s not even that as Article 151 is not really a generalised “party members can’t have extramarital sex ever” rule, but just a “don’t abuse your power to be a sex pest” clause. The real “don’t get caught in a strip club” provision is Article 153 (i.e. don’t “violate social public order and good morals”) and since the sex industry is, as far as I’m aware, still very illegal in China, a party member being caught in one is basically also a criminal matter as well as a party discipline matter.
It’s not just mistranslation of the phrase; the tweet deliberately excises context surrounding it, seemingly to imply that the CPC is trying to do some sort of crude artistic censorship, as if Xi is trying to prevent the Chinese from watching superhero slop movies, playing gacha games, or reading Ulysses because James Joyce included too many fart jokes in it, that it’s some sort of socialist-flavoured puritanical mass thought control project, rather than doing pragmatic and measured anti-corruption/anti-graft stuff among the elite to avoid inciting mass political dissatisfaction.
In full, Article 150 reads: “生活奢靡、铺张浪费、贪图享乐、追求低级趣味，造成不良影响的，给予警告或者严重警告处分；情节严重的，给予撤销党内职务处分。”, i.e., “Those who lead extravagant lives, waste money, pursue pleasure, and pursue vulgar interests, causing adverse effects, shall be given a warning or a serious warning; if the circumstances are serious, they shall be given a disciplinary sanction of removal from their party posts.” Based on the way the regulation is phrased, it’s clear that the core idea behind it is essentially that the personal lives of party officials shouldn’t cause detriment (造成不良影响) to the people and the Party by being wasteful or manifestly corrupt. It’s the consequence that’s the key ingredient, the wasteful and crude behaviours in of themselves are just the typical methods by which those bad consequence are arrived at. It’s not merely enjoying kitsch hobbies that fall outside reading theory and volunteering at the local soup kitchen (btw, do they even have those in China? What’s the homeless situation there? Is it a problem in the big cities? Is the CPC doing anything about it?) or spending money on stupid expensive things for personal enjoyment, but when that enjoyment is pursued to such an egregious extent/in such a way that causes material or measurable harm. A guideline published by the Guangdong Provincial Disciplinary Inspection Commission supports this interpretation, saying that “violation of this [Article 150] disciplinary regulation is based on “causing adverse effects” as a constituent element. On the one hand, the adverse effects should be comprehensively grasped from the living standards, consumption standards, customs and habits of the local people. On the other hand, it depends on whether it affects the masses’ recognition of party members’ practice of the core socialist values. If their extravagant life and other behaviors do not cause concentrated reflections from the masses, or the circumstances are minor and do not cause negative comments, and do not affect the masses’ recognition of party members and cadres’ practice of the core socialist values, it is generally not appropriate to identify them as violations of discipline.”. If I read all this correctly, it’s essentially just a rule against party members being involved in big flashy corruption scandals. You know, the ones that regular working folk don’t like, and that the US and the West likes to point out to lecture about how communism is actually authoritarian and doomed to fail.
If you’re interested, you can search online to see what weirdly specific examples/precedent cases the published guidelines cite in explaining what constitutes an offence, including a provincial party secretary being widely known to regularly (i.e., more than twice a month) drink expensive wine and dine on exotic endanged animals in high-end nighclubs (entirely on the nighclub owner’s expense, and in a nighclub deliberately designed by political flunkies to fit said party official’s tastes), or “spending several months’ salary to buy milk, scanning the QR code in the milk bottle cap to vote for an entertainment idol, and then pouring out the whole box of milk, arousing strong public condemnation”. Wild stuff.
Incredible political schizoposting by some mainland Chinese “pro-establishment right-wing” Huey Longist (???) on twitter:
English translation:
