38 China The EconomistNovember 2nd 2019
2 nity-corrections bureau, of which nearly
3,000 have been set up. They are supposed
to be offered practical assistance such as
help finding work and housing.
So far the system has been managed
with a hodgepodge of regulations that
some officials find confusing and lacking
in legal weight. To remedy this, the govern-
ment is preparing a national law on com-
munity corrections. On October 21st a sec-
ond draft of this was presented to senior
legislators. As state media pointed out, it
included a notable addition. It said that
community-corrections work must “re-
spect and guarantee human rights”. The
new draft requires that participants’ pri-
vacy be protected and their “personal free-
dom” not be restricted (though they would
need permission to leave their home-
towns). It says their whereabouts will not
be tracked digitally unless they break rules.
The government has a monetary incen-
tive to encourage community sentences.
The cost per convict is about one-tenth of
that for prisoners, reckons Wu Zongxian of
Beijing Normal University. Benjamin Lieb-
man of Columbia Law School thinks that
judges dangle suspended sentences as a re-
ward for defendants who compensate vic-
tims. He speculates that judges also some-
times use the community-service
approach when they think defendants are
innocent. Courts do not want to offend
state prosecutors by acquitting people.
Officials think the system is working. At
least while they are enrolled in the scheme,
only 0.2% of people re-offend, they say.
About 10% of ex-prisoners do. But there is a
shortage of well-trained staff. Many of
them are former guards at labour camps.
They are often more concerned with track-
ing participants’ movements than with re-
habilitating them. The shortage is most
acute in rural areas, says Enshen Li of
Queensland University. This results in
huge unfairness for defendants who have
migrated to cities from the countryside.
Judges prefer to jail them rather than give
them suspended sentences because urban
probation officers often refuse to handle
them and there is no one in their place of
birth to oversee community service.
Nationwide, the percentage of criminal
trials that resulted in community sen-
tences reached around 35% five years ago,
according to data collated by Yang Xue of
Nanjing Normal University. But since then
it has fallen to about 30%. One possibility is
that judges are growing more conscious of
the system’s flaws. The new law may help
allay their concerns. But courts will remain
subject to the Communist Party’s whims.
In recent months police forces have been
vying to outdo each other in their efforts to
implement the party’s campaign against
“black and evil forces”, a term covering
everyone from thugs to labour activists.
Those caught can expect no mercy. 7C
hina reveresNobel prizes and it loves
things that are big. A four-day forum in
Shanghai, under way as The Economistwent
to press, has been a perfect union of these.
It is one of the world’s largest-ever gather-
ings of Nobel laureates outside the award
ceremonies themselves, with 44 attend-
ing—mostly scientists, plus a few econo-
mists. Winners of prizes such as the Turing
award are also taking part. China staged the
inaugural World Laureates Forum last year,
billing it as a platform for global scientific
collaboration. But there is no question that
its main goal is the advancement of science
in China. At this year’s convention an
opening video, set to stirring music, dis-
pensed with subtlety. One segment started
with Americans planting their flag on the
Moon and culminated in Chinese astro-
nauts holding theirs in space.
In a letter to the guests, President Xi
Jinping said China was willing to work with
all countries to cope with the challenges of
our age. Yet the concern hanging over Chi-
nese science is whether the West is willing
to work with it (see Chaguan). America has
been most active in stepping up scrutiny of
Chinese researchers, worried that they
may be pilfering technology. Others, in-
cluding Canada and Australia, have also
started taking a closer look.
That is one reason why China is keen to
gather foreign laureates. It generates the
kind of approbation that it feels it does not
get enough of abroad (the Communist-
ruled country has produced only one Nobel
prize-winner of its own in science). The fo-rum’s participants speak enthusiastically
about China’s scientific work. “What the
Chinese government understands and is
doing well is broad support for basic sci-
ence,” Roger Kornberg, an American who
won the Nobel for chemistry, told state
television. It may be that some elderly lau-
reates doddering around the hall are well
past their most productive years. But plen-
ty of others are still at the cutting edge. At
least 40 have received their various awards
in the past decade. One held high office:
Steven Chu, America’s secretary of energy
under Barack Obama.
The topics discussed are widely varied,
covering fields ranging from dark matter
and the atomic analysis of water to pre-
term births. “It’s a little too remote from my
field to be efficient,” says one European at-
tendee during a break, asking for anonym-
ity to avoid offending his hosts. But China
may benefit. The head of a laboratory at a
leading American university says he has
tentatively offered two postdoctoral fel-
lowships to Chinese he has just met. A biol-
ogist from another American university
says the forum could draw talent to China.
“Back home it’s endless grant applications.
Here, they’re promising us stable funding
and a pipeline of researchers,” he says.
The organisers also appear to have a
narrower goal in mind. The forum is held
on a man-made island on a perfectly circu-
lar artificial lake about 70km from down-
town Shanghai. The area, known as Lin-
gang New City, feels desolate now, with
broad, empty streets and few businesses.
Local officials want to make it a technology
hub, home to research by the world’s best
scientists. They claim already to have
signed collaboration agreements with 40
of them. Whether or not these promises
come to fruition, the buzz may help Lin-
gang’s marketing as it tries to entice inves-
tors. Planners seem to believe that an im-
portant commercial application of science
is developing valuable property. 7SHANGHAI
A giant Nobel forum helps Chinese
science and property developersAcademic exchangeBuilding bridges
and selling them