Article 35 of China’s Constitution promises citizens freedom of assembly. It is a guarantee that falls apart the moment the state decides that assembly is a threat to “public order”. The sleight of meaning is deliberate. In democracies governed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-which China has signed but never ratified-assembly remains a basic right which can only be denied under narrowly defined, publicly transparent circumstances. In the People’s Republic, assembly becomes a conditional permission the state gives or revokes at discretion, a difference which exposes the deep chasm between constitutional promises and authoritarian practice.
This system has its legal scaffolding in the Public Security Administration Punishments Law (PSAPL), revised in 2025. Articles 29 and 30 permit detention of between five and fifteen days for acts that “disturb social order”-a category so expansive it encompasses nearly any form of collective expression. Unlike criminal law, which requires judicial involvement, administrative detention requires no warrant, no court hearing, and offers minimal due process. The law’s supplementary provision for “deprivation of political rights” ensures that even after release, participants face systematic exclusion from political participation, employment in certain sectors, and public office. As scholars note, detained persons lose the ability to vote, stand for election, and access government services-effectively exiling them whilst they remain in their homeland.
The 2022 White Paper protesters in Shanghai got a firsthand taste of this machinery. The regime charged them under Article 293 of the Criminal Code: “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”-language sufficiently vague to criminalise any speech that is politically inconvenient. Analysed by Amnesty International in a comprehensive examination of 68 cases over a decade, this charge was weaponised in 90 per cent of instances to target peaceful assembly. A human rights lawyer was convicted for simply representing clients in politically sensitive disputes. A Nobel laureate was sentenced to eleven years in prison for co-authoring a call for constitutional reform. The verdict in 67 out of 68 cases examined was guilty-a conviction rate suggesting not justice, but theatre.
These legal contradictions crystallise when comparing domestic law with China’s treaty obligations. The ICCPR, which China signed in 1998, explicitly recognises peaceful assembly as a right subject only to restrictions “necessary in a democratic society”. Yet China has deliberately refused ratification, a choice scholars describe as pragmatic authoritarianism: by remaining merely a signatory, Beijing avoids treaty body oversight whilst maintaining a façade of international commitment. One legal scholar bluntly concludes that China’s refusal to ratify, despite two decades of claimed preparation, reflects not legislative delays but a calculated rejection of binding human rights norms.
The gap between promise and practice widens through the use of administrative detention without judicial authorisation, which is a system that experts say violates international human rights norms. Under the revised PSAPL, the police serve as investigator, prosecutor, judge, and executor all at once, a concentration of power found nowhere in any established democracy. Detained protesters have reported prolonged interrogations in conditions that amount to torture. Former demonstrators described being shackled in stress positions, sleep deprivation, and psychological intimidation. The regime’s response: silence. When the CIVICUS Monitor documented the arrest of protesters in early 2024, China denied charges outright, providing no transparency or accountability.
The long tail of punishment stretches well beyond detention itself. Deprivation of political rights runs from one to five years, life-long for those convicted of crimes threatening state stability. Victims cannot take part in elections, jury services, or become government employees. Employment in journalism, academia, law, and public administration becomes inaccessible. Husbands, wives, and children face collateral damage by association, thereby creating multi-generational punishment extending beyond the convicted.
Beyond Shanghai’s streets, this model exports globally. In a 2025 study, researchers found that China exports surveillance infrastructure to 80 nations, with Huawei and other state-linked firms marketing facial recognition systems disproportionately to autocratic states. These transfers are not commercially neutral; Beijing views data as a “strategic resource” accessible to its intelligence services. A former Congressional report warns that China targets weak democracies experiencing domestic unrest, providing surveillance tools precisely when governments seek to suppress dissent. The implications are chilling: democracies adopting Chinese surveillance apparatus may inadvertently construct their own cages.
But India, the largest democracy in South Asia, faces particular vulnerability. Regional research identifies a “trust deficit” where externally imposed governance frameworks clash with local institutional realities. As China’s Digital Silk Road expands, policymakers risk importing not merely technology but authoritarianism as a governance model. Yet the deeper tragedy extends beyond technology. China’s system represents a regression parading as modernisation. Article 51 of its Constitution allows authorities to suppress rights which harm state interests, a Procrustean standard allowing indefinite suppression.
International law expert Margaret K. Lewis argues China should unsign the ICCPR in its entirety-a candid acknowledgement that the party-state rejects the covenant’s core tenets. The repetition of this pattern-from Tiananmen Square through Hong Kong’s National Security Law to Shanghai’s White Paper protests-demonstrates that repression is not an aberration but a doctrine. From this, democracies worldwide take a profoundly timely lesson: for the protection of assembly rights, legal frameworks require more than constitutional text. They require independent judiciaries, transparent procedures, proportionate penalties, and accountability mechanisms. Take away these, and assembly becomes not a right but a permission to be revoked; silence becomes not the absence of dissent but its dictate.
(Ashu Mann is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies. He was awarded the Vice Chief of the Army Staff Commendation card on Army Day 2025. He is pursuing a PhD from Amity University, Noida, in Defence and Strategic Studies. His research focuses include the India-China territorial dispute, great power rivalry, and Chinese foreign policy.)
