…there are many instances in which the laws on the books don’t have much effect, and society runs according to a completely different set of unwritten rules. Some Chinese call these “hidden rules.”
An example of how these hidden rules work can be found just a couple minutes’ walk from one of Beijing’s busiest downtown intersections.
There sits a small hotel run by the government of South China’s Guangxi province. Provincial officials occasionally use the hotel to secretly detain people who come to the capital to complain about local government abuses. They are kept under a sort of house arrest until they can be shipped home.
China has denied the existence of “black jails” to the United Nations’ human rights commission, but almost anyone petitioning the government can show you one.
Read or better yet listen to it all.
NPR: Secret Jails Used To Enforce China's 'Hidden Rules'
…there are many instances in which the laws on the books don’t have much effect, and society runs according to a completely different set of unwritten rules. Some Chinese call these “hidden rules.”
An example of how these hidden rules work can be found just a couple minutes’ walk from one of Beijing’s busiest downtown intersections.
There sits a small hotel run by the government of South China’s Guangxi province. Provincial officials occasionally use the hotel to secretly detain people who come to the capital to complain about local government abuses. They are kept under a sort of house arrest until they can be shipped home.
China has denied the existence of “black jails” to the United Nations’ human rights commission, but almost anyone petitioning the government can show you one.
Read or better yet listen to it all.