CLB previously reported on the Guangdong procuratorate’s instructions to go easy on “ordinary” corporate crimes, while putting severe restricitions on workers rights. Among other things, the instructions put limits on law enforcment’s ability to freeze enterprise owner’s bank accounts and detain enterprise owners, while at the same time encouraging authorities to use the law to attack those who hurt enterprises’ lawful interests and various crimes related to influencing production. Perhaps most ominously, reports that inluence an enterprise’s reputation will not be allowed.
However, even as the procuratorate made an obvious attempt to keep enterprises afloat and keep social order intact, it appears that the Opinion has not been met with universal praise on the internet.
The Sina website took a poll asking, “Guangdong regulations stipulate that company leaders involved in ordinary crimes can’t be detained. What do you think?”
The possible results were:
- Approve. In this severe economic situation, this move will help promote empolyment and social stability.
- Oppose. Everybody is equal before the law. We can’t, for the sake of pursuing economic effeciancy, allow a “special group of people” (who operate outside the law) to exist.
- Hard to say.
Of the 46,370 people who voted, 92.1% chose “Oppose”, 7% chose “Approve”, while 0.9% chose “hard to say”. While it’s hard to conclude anything from a single unscientific poll, these striking results would seem to indicate that as the government moves to help enterprises and maintain social order, policies that appear to allow the privileged and the powerful to get away with crimes will be overwhelmingly unpopular with the public.