Military-related issues in the Chinese courts: 2018 edition

Henan campaign to bring law into military bases 

This contributor recently wrote about China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) Court President Zhou Qiang's March 2019 report to the national legislature, the National People's Congress, on her blog. In recent years, as this contributor last wrote in 2017 here on this blog, his report occasionally contains a bit of information about military-related disputes.  The language in the report requires some decoding for readers unused to reading official Chinese reports:

Military courts advanced pilot projects in hearing administrative cases, according to law heard housing demolition, labor protection and other administrative cases, protected the legal rights and interests of persons in relation to administration... 

Resolutely safeguard the interests of national defense and the legitimate rights and interests of military personnel. According to the law, the number of cases involving the military's comprehensive cessation of paid services was 18,883, and the task of providing judicial support for the military's suspension was resolutely completed, serving the national defense and military reform, and serving military and civilian integration. We will strengthen military-related rights-protection work, and investigate various military-related cases such as sabotaging military facilities and sabotaging military marriages in accordance with the law, and promote the unity of military, political, and military personnel. 

[In the tasks for 2019]Strengthen trials involving the military, actually protect national defense interests and the legal interests of military people and those related to the military, support national defense construction and military reform. 

军事法院推进军事行政审判试点，取得良好效果。依法审理房屋拆迁、劳动保障等行政案件，维护行政相对人合法权益...坚决维护国防利益和军人军属合法权益。依法审结、执结涉及军队全面停止有偿服务相关案件18883件，坚决如期完成为军队停偿提供司法保障任务，服务国防和军队改革，服务军民融合发展。加强涉军维权工作，依法审理破坏军事设施、破坏军婚等各类涉军案件，促进军政军民团结.[from the section on 2019 goals: 加强涉军案件审判，切实维护国防利益和军人军属合法权益，服务国防建设和军队改革

A bit of amateur decoding:

• On administrative cases:  in 2017, the Central Military Commission issued a plan (to which the SPC concurred) to pilot administrative litigation in the Beijing and Guangzhou Military Courts.  The PLA Military Court issued guidance (not made public) and there was initial concern that plaintiffs would be afraid to sue because of retaliation and agencies would be reluctant to appear in court. The authorities must have found it useful to track these disputes into the courts rather than to have these disputes ferment and end up with protests. A doctoral student seems to have done some underlying theoretical research. 
• On the military's comprehensive cessation of paid services (this contributor previously wrote on this topic for this blog, an updated case search reveals many, but not all of the cases brought in the civilian courts were disputes over lease terminations, but also involves other services provided by military entities, such as a dispute over a military design institute's failure to provide a construction engineering design to a real estate developer.
• On sabotaging military facilities, a search did not turn up very many cases, but it did include a 2017 case in which a Guangdong peasant stole cable belonging to the military.
• Unlike this contributor's search two years ago, a search did uncover some cases involving the crime of the destruction of military marriage.  One example is a 2018 case in Xining, Qinghai (far western China), in which a man was convicted and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. The defendant had attended a couple's wedding (in which a woman married a soldier), but when the husband was away for long periods of time, the wife befriended the defendant. The wife gave birth to a daughter, and the wife subsequently sought to divorce her husband.  During that time, the husband discovered through DNA testing that he was not the father of the daughter, and reported the matter to the police.
• Civil-military integration is also leading to more disputes, including ones involving civil-military technology centers and parties whose land they are seeking to acquire.  Another illustration of how important real estate is to the Chinese economy.