A court in Tianjin heard the cases of Zhai Yanmin, Hu Shigen, Zhou Shifeng and Gou Hongguo from Tuesday to Friday, sentencing them up to seven and a half years in jail for the crime of subverting State power.

The four were arrested in July 2015, along with other activists. The Western media described it as a "mass crackdown" on rights lawyers. In the past year, the Western governments repeatedly tried to interfere, some forces instigated or organized the family members of the arrested to stage protests and pressure the judicial organ that handled the activists' cases. They want to smear China's legal system.

The legal procedure moved ahead. This is the first time since the National Security Law came into force on July 1 that a series of cases involving subversion charges have been publicized. The open trials and sentences are an important testament to China's rule of law in response to Western accusations. The trials also help the Chinese society tell what is normal freedom of speech and what is intolerable crimes that threatens national security.

The trials did not go about any business violations or other areas, but directly focused on their attempts to overthrow the State power. It shows the country's confidence to protect its political system according to the law.

Lawyers advocate for the law. But a few of them went the other side of the law, and at one time won a certain degree of response on the Internet. This reflects how seriously the Western ideology has been infiltrating the country. Confronting the country's basic political system, and inciting people to resist the country's laws, the lawyers believe they were acting through freedom of expression. It is ridiculous.

If we let such ill trends spread in China, it will be like letting the country slip into the waves of the West's "political transformation" of the non-Western world. A Chinese nation that is on its way of rejuvenation will go astray and face huge political uncertainties.

The convictions of the four activists show the Chinese law's defiance of their Western support. The radicals who had dreamed of relying on Western support better give up such fantasies.

In the age of the Internet, China will also strive to nurture creativity and vitality. But it does not mean that the country will be led to disorder and chaos, or even an end to the socialist system.

Zhou Shifeng and people around him had long seen the Chinese political system as their enemy. The public knows that, too. Their wrong political choices led to their mistaken reading of the country's law. They were doomed to hit the country's wall because they were heading against the Constitution in the very beginning.

Other people who are still heading that way need to learn their lessons.