Critiquing Tsinghua University Professor Lao Dongyan’s Support for Peking University Professor Zhao Hong on Drug Record Sealing: Based on Marxist Legal Principles and Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law

Abstract

This paper conducts a systematic critical analysis of Professor Lao Dongyan of Tsinghua University's public discourse advocating for Zhao Hong of Peking University and supporting the ‘sealing system for public order offences such as drug use’. The analysis is grounded within the normative framework constituted by Marxist legal principles and Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law. The research aims to examine the consistency and tensions between her argumentative system and the Marxist legal stance, as well as the overall national security outlook. Methodologically, this study first abstractly reconstructs Professor Lao's core argumentative chains concerning record sealing, cyberspace governance, and criminal law restraint, delineating her premises, problem definitions, and reasoning pathways. Subsequently, employing a multi-level logical diagnostic approach, we conduct a dual examination of both form and substance at the levels of semantic premises, problem structures, and rules of inference. This analysis is normatively contrasted with Marxist jurisprudence's ‘people-centred approach,’ ‘class analysis,’ and ‘historical and structural perspectives,’ as well as Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law's comprehensive national security outlook and its tripartite framework of ‘security-development-rights.’ The findings indicate that while the argument offers valuable insights in clarifying the boundaries between public order offences and criminal acts, resisting over-criminalisation, and countering ‘public opinion trials,’ it exhibits several structural biases. These include: narrowing the concept of ‘the people’ to a specific rights-bearing group; simplifying the security-development-rights triad into a unidimensional opposition between ‘state power and individual rights’; overemphasising risks to rights, confounding factual and value judgements, and flattening heterogeneous critiques into a homogeneous discursive object. The conclusion posits that this logic system centred on ‘rights-risk-technological governance’ is only partially compatible with Marxist jurisprudence. Overall, it has yet to genuinely address the value hierarchy demanding ‘people's security as the purpose, political security as the foundation, and national interests as paramount.’ Therefore, in institutional debates concerning drug governance and internet governance, it is necessary to conduct substantive calibration and reconstruction of relevant theoretical discourses and institutional designs, while upholding the people's stance and the overall national security outlook.

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