Every reference to "democracy advocates" in the article should be relabled "blackbox advocates" because I have yet to read in the Western press about anybody who actually advocates "democracy." What such advocates actually advocate is not reported in detail in this article or in many others. Some of these people might be fighting for good things, and might be fighting for something they call "democracy" but what our middle-class writers call democracy is rarely democratic. In general, we learn as much about the democracy that the "democracy advocates" fight for as we learn about what U.S. anti-Trump liberals mean when they continually say "our democracy" is under threat. I have not idea what these liberals mean by democracy and I have no idea what the writer of this article means by "democracy advocate." It is just the usual kind of thinking without meaning.

The paragraphs about legal history could be interesting if expanded. The legal history of China since 1948 is ignored in the popular press. In general the details of Chinese Communist Party governance is ignored. In general the admistrative history of present day China is rarely written about except as horror stories. Of course, we should know about the horror stories, but horror stories alone tell very little about Chinese governance or the attitudes of the various classes of Chinese people in the many regions of China. 

There are some interesting incidents reported in the article but not enough to make the article worth reading. My Chinese friends tell me much more in a few minutes than I learned in this article.