22 China The EconomistJuly 25th 2020
2 gious errors by the police. One of them was
exposed in 2005 when a woman in Hubei,
another central province, turned up alive 11
years after her husband told police that he
had killed her (she had left her home to be-
gin a new life). The other came to light in
2010 when a villager returned to his home
in Henan, more than a decade after his
neighbour had admitted to murdering him
during an argument. In both cases police
had misidentified decomposed bodies.
The publicity given to these wrongful con-
victions was a hint of officials’ concern
about the impact such cases were having
on public confidence in the justice system
and in the Communist Party’s competence.
After taking power, Xi Jinping put new
emphasis on a campaign, begun by his pre-
decessors, to stop such embarrassments.
Encouraged by this, some lawyers and law
professors launched co-ordinated efforts
to get shaky-looking cases reopened, using
tactics learned from similar grassroots
campaigns in America.
Officials have shown no eagerness to re-
examine cases involving dissidents—in-
deed, under Mr Xi’s rule the party’s critics
have been subject to harsher repression.
Lawyers who have tried to defend ordinary
people against the power of the state have
been harassed and jailed. But over the past
eight years, there has been a string of direc-
tives aimed at curbing other miscarriages
of justice. Two revisions to the criminal-
procedure law, the most recent in 2018,
have sought to make it easier for defen-
dants to challenge evidence obtained un-
der duress. In January the government or-
dered that people accused of major crimes,
as well as their lawyers, be interviewed at
the end of investigations to ascertain
whether torture was used. It has also been
trying to make trials less of a mere ritual:
for example, by giving courts more power
to compel witnesses to appear in person. In
2017 the government said it wanted all de-
fendants in criminal cases to have access to
a lawyer, though it gave no deadline.
There have been other encouraging
trends. He Jiahong of Renmin University in
Beijing says the increasing availability of
electronic evidence, such as from mobile
phones, cashless payments and security
cameras, is likely to reduce the value of ob-
taining confessions. And he spots a change
in attitudes, whereby people who work in
the justice system are increasingly in-
clined to agree that it is better to let the
guilty go free than to punish innocents.
But it is difficult to judge how much this
is helping to make justice fairer. Informa-
tion that might be helpful, such as changes
in the proportion of cases being concluded
without a confession, is hard to come by.
Proving trends in abuses committed by po-
lice is “almost impossible”, says nyu’s Mr
Belkin. The party’s secrecy may also be di-
rectly obstructing change. Tobias Smith oftheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley,says
thegovernmenthasneglecteditspromise
toensurethatdefencelawyerstakepartin
reviewsofdeath-penaltycasesbecauseit
doesnotwantthemtoworkouthowmany
peopleareexecuted,whichisa statesecret.
CriminaljusticeinChinaisincreasing-
ly splittingalongtwo tracks.People ac-
cusedofcrimesthatareunrelatedtopoli-
tics are gradually receiving better
protection. Those accused of political
crimes or official corruption are being
treatedmoreharshly,saysJoshuaRosenz-
weigofAmnestyInternational.Theideais
tohavea legalsystemthatlooksfairerto
manycitizensbutstilljustasthreatening
topeoplewhomthepartyfearsmightop-
poseorundermineit.Thatcouldbecalled
progress,butfewwouldcallit justice. 7I
n may, whenthe first monsoon rains
sweep across the mountainous province
of Yunnan, foragers throng to damp forests
to hunt for wild mushrooms. Grandmoth-
ers strap wicker baskets to their backs,
wielding sticks with which to rake the for-
est floor and hook from it a “black beef liv-
er” (known elsewhere as a bronze bolete) or
a crimson “green pinch” (named for the
bruises that fingerprints leave on its vel-
vety gills). Joining them at first light are lo-
cal chefs, village children and their par-
ents, some of them migrant workers who
have returned from far-flung coastal fac-tories especially for the hunt.
Thousands of Yunnanese families earn
much of their living from the wild-fungi
season, which runs until October. The
160,000 tonnes they collect annually in the
poor south-western province generate in-
come of about 10bn yuan ($1.4bn). The
most valuable end up on posh dinner
plates abroad, from porcini—beloved of
Europeans—to meaty matsutake, prized by
South Koreans and Japanese. Trains are
commandeered to get the mushrooms
from basket to banquet in under 30 hours.
A rail service launched last year has been
dubbed the “high-speed matsutake ex-
press”. Whatever is not sold fresh is air-
dried, frozen or made into a relish.
In the summer, Wu Huahai, a young fa-
ther from Wujia village, makes 4,000 yuan
a month from scouring the hills—roughly
what he makes as a driver near the coast. In
protected forests, where collecting is limit-
ed to local families, and so competition is
less fierce, a hunter’s monthly take can
reach 10,000 yuan. Among the most covet-
ed types are “goat belly” mushrooms (mo-
rels), which can fetch up to 1,000 yuan per
kilo when they appear later in the season.
But this year demand for Yunnan’s mush-
rooms has been dented by covid-19. Prices
have fallen by as much as half.
At the market where Mr Wu and his wife
hawk the morning’s finds, 170 tonnes of
wild fungi are sold every day in season. It is
located in Nanhua, Yunnan’s best-en-
dowed county mycologically. A vast array
of mushrooms grow across the province.
Yunnan accounts for just 4% of China’s
land area yet is home to more than 800 of
the country’s 1,000 known edible varieties,
and about one third of the world’s. Dozens
more are discovered in Yunnan every year,
says Yang Zhuliang of the Kunming Insti-
tute of Botany.
Some are lethal. A type identified in
2012 is called “little white” because of its re-
semblance to an innocuous oyster mush-
room. Mr Yang’s institute named it as the
culprit behind Yunnan Unknown Cause
Sudden Death Syndrome, which for de-
cades had haunted villagers during the
monsoon. Little whites now feature on bill-
boards at wet markets in the region that
show how to discern the delectable from
the deadly (and warn against the mind-
bending, which are popular).
Another danger lurks. Mycologists fret
that harvesting is damaging the mush-
rooms’ habitat. Some hunters unearth
them too young, says Yang Hongying, an
old-timer on the hills. She finds only a
tenth of what she recalls gathering as a
child. But back then there “wasn’t really a
market for mushrooms”, says Ms Yang.
Now the villagers’ everyday meals—nutty
summer truffle shaved raw over eggs, or
yellow jizong stir-fried with salted ham—
are considered truly to die for. 7NANHUA
How a mycological marvel in the
south-west helps villagers get richWild mushroomsThe champignon
champions
Check the billboard first