State-adjacent Professionals: How Chinese Lawyers Participate in Political Life

Abstract

This article complicates the conventional wisdom that Chinese lawyers are either politically liberal activists or apolitical hired guns by training our attention on the group of lawyers who choose to stand adjacent to the state and participate in governance. Through an examination of how and why winners of the state-sanctioned Outstanding Lawyer Award participate in politics, we illustrate how state-adjacent lawyers provide the state with information and persuade others to behave in ways the state considers appropriate. Although proximity to power affords some social and professional benefits, award winners are also motivated by a commitment to improving Chinese society. By highlighting the political role played by lawyers who serve as a bridge between state and society, we open the door to future research on the relationship between the state and professionals in other industries and countries, and call for continued attention to how inequality shapes opportunities for political participation in China.

Neither Withdrawal nor Resistance: Adapting to Increased Repression in China

“…The fieldwork took place in six cities from 2016 to 2019 and is supplemented with information drawn from journalists’ accounts and other scholars who study Chinese Protestantism. The impetus for this article was research by Lawrence Liu and Rachel Stern on “good lawyers” (Stern and Liu, 2020) and “state-adjacent professionals” (Liu and Stern, 2021) as well as Elizabeth Perry’s (2020) examination of compliant academics. 2 Teaching these articles alongside Lee and O’Brien’s aforementioned article (2021) led to a natural question: How well does our argument about pastors’ accommodation of power apply to other groups?…”

“…Members of other groups are also finding ways to live with repression that bring to mind the coping strategies adopted by Protestant pastors. Consider the “good lawyers” whom Liu and Stern profiled in two recent articles (Stern and Liu, 2020; Liu and Stern, 2021). These “state-adjacent professionals” hardly seem to be in the same line of work as the hundreds of human rights lawyers who were rounded up and detained in 2015 (Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers and the Leitner Center, 2015; Palmer, 2017; Fu, 2018) and who have found themselves under continuing pressure ever since (China Human Rights Defenders, 2021).…”

“…They have little good to say about activist lawyers who use litigation as a tool of social change. Rather than “grandstanding” in court or pursuing legal fights on the streets or online, they favor “normal tactics” and “courteous, by-the-book courtroom advocacy.” They criticize human rights lawyers for using courts as a “personal stage” and decry their tactics as “illegal, excessive, irrational, and destructive” (Stern and Liu, 2020; Liu and Stern, 2021).…”

“…They are not the sort of lawyers who criticize a decision before it has been issued, interrupt court proceedings, or block the doors of government buildings. Instead, their political participation takes place through approved channels and focuses on comparatively small-bore legal issues, such as how to classify small-claims litigation or whether it is wise to establish an intellectual property court in a neighborhood with many high-tech enterprises (Stern and Liu, 2020; Liu and Stern, 2021).…”

Mediating state–society disputes in China: Outsourced lawyers and their selective responses

“… 16. A recent work by Lawrence Liu and Rachel Stern discusses state-adjacent lawyers; see Lawrence Liu and Rachel Stern, State-adjacent lawyering: How Chinese lawyers participate in political life (paper presented at Wisconsin International Law Journal Annual Symposium ‘Lawyers and Lawyering in China and Russia: Common Challenges’, Madison, USA, 5 April 2019). …”