A brief news article published on Sunday by a score of state-run news media outlets offered an account of an unexpected judicial verdict: a Beijing municipal court had sentenced 10 people to jail for illegally detaining and assaulting a group of citizens who had come to the capital to lodge complaints about official malfeasance in their hometown in China’s central Henan Province.
Andrew Jacobs is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times who has been based in Beijing since 2008. Taking a year off from studying Chinese at New York University, Jacobs first stepped foot in...