Slashdot Mirror
China Sentences Bank Cracker/Thief to Death
Many submitted this brief Excite News item: two Chinese brothers pulled a $87,000 bank robbery by cracking the bank's computers. One brother talked and got off. The other got a death sentence. Slashdot reader malroth commented, "Now MAYBE theft of $87,000 constitutes a crime worth execution in China, but i find it hard to imagine. This is sheer speculation, but i presume that what ticked off the Chinese judiciary was the hacking part of the crime."
First off, let's get two things straight about the Chinese legal system. They didn't execute hackers in China because China is "scared" of hackers, nor is it because China is some "evil communist" country who routinely puts people to death because they don't embrase our democratic form of government.
The Chinese civic system of punishments stems from the Chinese Legalist school of thought, a philosophical system which was instrumental in setting up the dictatorship of Ch'in in 221B.C., and in unifying China around the same time.
The cornerstone of Chinese Legalism is the accumulation of the power necessary to rule what (and is) the largest country in the world, using stone-age tools. Legalism's aim of controlling such a large mass of humanity (at a time when Plato was extolling the virtues of a city-state whose size never exceeded about 5,000 people) was done through a system of rigerous and intensive set of laws backed by generous rewards and severe punishments. In short, Legalism extolled the virtue of setting up a system of well-defined laws that everyone could understand, and dealing out severe punishments to those who violated the law.
"Legalism", while not as fully embrased by the Chinese as Confusianism and Taoism, does make up one of the three pillars of Chinese civic philosophy. It's been around for a couple of thousand years, and is the reasoning why littering (i.e., dropping a wad of paper on the ground) is punishable by prison time, and why thieves are routinely put to death.
You also have to keep in mind that our more "humanist" approach to punishment has only evolved in the last hundred years or so. It wasn't all that long ago when we in the west were dropping thieves into a 50-foot pit onto a stone floor and leaving them to rot without food or water. (In fact, the Hollywood image of a castle dungeon is rather inaccurate--most dungeons were nothing more than stone pit 50 or more feet deep where prisoners were literally dropped. The ones who didn't die due to the force of impact with the stone floor died for a lack of water.)
The principle difference between the United States and Chinese philosophy are threefold: first, our stated goal in punishing a criminal is to rehabilitate--this stems from the Judeo-Christian need for redemption. The Chinese use punishment not to rehabilitate but to set a harsh example to others who would break the law.
Second, as we are trying to achieve redemption of the criminal, we set punishments which "fit" the crime--a modified form of "an eye for an eye" where we make habitual litterers pick up trash, and make thieves pay back their victim. In China, as their goal is to set an example, they create punishments which indicate to the public how unacceptable the crime is. Thus, putting first time litterers in jail, or putting thieves to death.
Third, as we are a common-law country, our laws evolve as we struggle to find a balance between maximizing freedom and creating stability. This is because in the United States, we are a country "of the people" where citizens are presumed to have entered into a "compact" to get along with each other. In China, Legalist philosphy has authority stemming from a central figure, so their ultimate goal is not to balance freedom with cooperation, but to create stability and peace. Thus, even if you execute the wrong person for theft, it's okay--he set an example for everyone else.
Chinese Legalism has been around a lot longer than Karl Marx. And it's been around a lot longer than computer hackers.