No one has pure rule of law, but at least the USA has it as a goal. The Chinese government has stated explicitly that rule of law isn’t a goal, so it leads to a very different legal system from ours. You have to think much more deeply about the spirit of the law and the flippant intentions of the official class that has all the power (the judicial system isn’t allowed to check official power, or even interpret ambiguous or competing laws).
> The Chinese government has stated explicitly that rule of law isn’t a goal
Can you share where you saw this? I am also not aware of anywhere that the US has stated that rule of law is a goal. What you are referring to is more of a norm or tradition. And norms can and do change over time for better or worse.
You could argue that rule of law follows from the preamble to the constitution but that doesn’t explicitly mention rule of law either. It mentions various values like justice and tranquility.
All you have to do is read the Chinese constitution to figure it out. Freedom of speech, religion, press, are all there but aren’t meaningful rights since there is no enforcement of those rights. For the rest, here is a document that explains the concept in more detail. https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2021C28/
> The aim is to use the law as a political instrument to make the state more efficient and to reduce the arbitrariness of how the law is applied for the majority of the population, among other things, with the help of advanced technology. In some areas, for example on procedural issues, Beijing continues to draw inspiration from the West in establishing its Chinese “rule of law”. However, the party-state leadership rejects an independent judiciary and the principle of separation of powers as “erroneous western thought”. Beijing is explicitly interested in propagating China’s conception of law and legal practice internationally, establishing new legal standards and enforcing its interests through the law. Berlin and Brussels should, therefore, pay special attention to the Chinese leadership’s concept of the law. In-depth knowledge on this topic will be imperative in order to grasp the strategic implications of China’s legal policy, to better understand the logic of their actions and respond appropriately.
This is mostly transcribed from those meetings (vs a westerner interpretation). You really need to understand this to get how the legal systems are different, and how party officials are basically given supreme power (only checked by their bosses).
