China’s leaders are keen historians, particularly when it comes to events that drained political power from authoritarian rulers. The Magna Carta, which established for the first time the principle that all, including the king, were subject to legal restraints on the exercise of power, is one such event. This marked a pivotal moment in world history and the document’s message still clearly disturbs China’s leaders more than 800 years after its issuance. Indeed, consider the abrupt and unexplained cancellation of a public display of one of the actual surviving Magna Carta originals at Renmin University in early October 2015. To that end, the Party leaders seek to forestall a Chinese “Magna Carta Moment,” in part by curtailing the activities of China’s rights lawyers (“weiquan lushi”), who seek to uphold the rights of individuals against the arbitrary or improper exercise of state power.

In Beijing’s mind, allowing these lawyers to operate freely could risk eventually establishing a new social contract under which the power of the Party should be subjugated to the force of an independent rule of law. Governments naturally seek to minimize potential constraints on their exercise of power. And this is precisely why Beijing is striking hard against the rights lawyers. In July and August of 2015, police interrogated and/or detained nearly 300 rights lawyers and their support staff, across 24 provinces and administrative areas. Beijing led the way, with 17 persons detained and 42 others interrogated and/or travel restricted (Exhibit 1).