Supreme People's Procuratorate v Yang Kuo-Ching

• Jurisdiction: China
• Date: 13 June 1966
• Court: Supreme Court (China)

People's Republic of China, Supreme People's Court.

(Hsing Yi-min, Vice-President and Presiding Judge; Yu T'ieh-min and Li Yang-wu JJ.)

Supreme People's Procuratorate

and

Yang Kuo-Ching.

Aliens Position of Treatment by and responsibilities of receiving State Protection Assaults on aliens Political motive Severe punishment The Law of the People's Republic of China.

The Facts (as summarized from the decision of the Court).The defendant's father was a despotic landlord before liberation and was executed in accordance with a death sentence rendered by a people's court after liberation. The People's Government had given constant attention to Yang Kuo-ching's education and remoulding and had made reasonable arrangements for his work and studies. However, he clung to his reactionary stand and nourished intense class hatred against the Party, the Government and the people. Since July 1965 he and three other counter-revolutionaries had formed themselves into a small group to plot counter-revolutionary activities. After being informed on by the others, he confessed to his criminal activities. As he was only 19 years old he was dealt with leniently by the Government: he was deprived of political rights for three years according to law, and ordered to remould himself under the supervision of the masses. However, he failed to repent and contemplated the murder of members of diplomatic missions or other friendly foreigners in China in an attempt to create an international murder case', to provoke an international dispute and to spoil China's international good name.

To attain this criminal aim, the defendant broke into the Peking Friendship Store on 29 April 1966 and with a kitchen knife wounded in the neck Bakari Traore, Head of the Journalists' Delegation of Mali to the Fourth Plenary Session of the Secretariat of the Afro-Asian Journalists' Association and then wounded in the face the wife of the First Secretary of the Embassy of the German Democratic Republic. After these assaults he rushed out of the store but was caught by people in the street. Owing to the exceptionally serious nature of the case, the Supreme People's Procuratorate brought the case before the Supreme People's Court for public prosecution after investigations by the public security organs.

Held: that the defendant must be sentenced to death.

The Court said: The counter-revolutionary murderer Yang Kuo-ching, having persisted in his reactionary class stand and resisted education and reformation...