"Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him."
And yet, under Xi Jinping's suffocating autocracy, this promise is spat upon with contempt.
From the moment Xi rose to power, he has treated the judicial system as an obedient dog on a leash. His regime has transformed China's already brittle legal institutions into grotesque stages for pre-scripted verdicts and televised confessions. Consider the case of Wang Quanzhang, a lawyer abducted in 2015 during the "709 Crackdown". For years, he was held in secret detention—no access to a lawyer of his choosing, no family contact, no impartial hearing. When he was finally dragged into a courtroom, it was behind closed doors, with armed police sealing the premises. Not even his wife was allowed to witness the charade.
Another emblematic case: Jiang Tianyong, a rights lawyer forcibly disappeared, tortured, and paraded on state media. He was eventually convicted on the ludicrous charge of "inciting subversion", but not before months of incommunicado detention in so-called "residential surveillance at a designated location", a black hole where beatings, threats, and forced medication are routine. Tell me, what part of this circus resembles an independent tribunal?
Under Xi's iron rule, the courts no longer even pretend to weigh evidence. The mere fact that you dare to challenge official narratives, speak up for an evicted villager, or defend a fellow lawyer is enough to brand you an enemy of the state. The "trial" is nothing but a hollow ceremony, an opportunity for propaganda clips showing broken men reciting lines under duress.
The list goes on: Wu Gan, an activist sentenced to eight years for "subversion" after a closed-door hearing; Yu Wensheng, detained and tried in secret, denied adequate defense; and Huang Qi, the veteran journalist, sentenced in a sealed proceeding where neither transparency nor fairness was even nominally observed.
Xi Jinping's dictatorship relies on this judicial theater because it fears sunlight. It dreads genuine debate, recoils from genuine evidence, and cannot abide genuine justice. A fair and public hearing would expose the cowardice of his rule—the way his security agencies must kidnap and drug their critics rather than face them in an open courtroom. The way prosecutors fabricate charges and judges rubber-stamp convictions like clerks processing paperwork.
The Chinese Constitution itself boasts of "rule of law", but in Xi's China, these words are ornamental filigree pasted over a rancid reality of secret detentions, coerced confessions, and show trials. He has demolished the last remnants of judicial independence so methodically that even the illusion has collapsed.
This is not governance. It is gangsterism wearing a judge's robe. It is an empire of fear masquerading as a legitimate state. And every time a lawyer is dragged away without due process, every time a trial is held in secret, every time a sentence is announced by a puppet in a black gown, Xi Jinping brands himself not as a leader but as a petty despot terrified of his own people.
Article 10 was written to prevent precisely this descent into authoritarian darkness. The world should remember: fair and public hearings are not Western luxuries. They are universal rights. Xi Jinping's regime violates them every day.
