Table Of ContentCRIMINAL JUSTICE IN CHINA
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN CHINA
A History
KLAUS MUHLHAHN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2009
Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Muhlhahn, Klaus
Criminal justice in China: a history I Klaus Muhlhahn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-03323-8 (alk. paper)
L Criminal justice, Administration of-China-History.
I. Title.
KNN1572.M84 2009
2008047378
CONTENTS
Introduction
1
L The Right Degree of Pain: Imperial China 14
2. The Prison Regime: Republican China 58
3. Trials of Terror: War and Revolution 127
4. Reform through Labor: The Communist State 175
Conclusion 284
Abbreviations 299
Archives 301
Acknowledgments 303
Notes 305
Index 353
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CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN CHINA
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INTRODUCTION
GER. Disgust. Fear. These words describe the reactions of the major
ty of Americans and Europeans toward what they hear about
criminal justice in China. Their negative impressions are further
nurtured by successful and highly influential Hollywood movies such as
the 1997 film Red Corner, in which Richard Gere plays an innocent Ameri
can businessman who is incarcerated and maltreated in a Chinese prison.
Memoirs of Chinese dissidents and frequent newspaper reports about
human rights violations contribute to the dark picture. Though some of
the allegations are undoubtedly true, negative reactions do little to help
Westerners understand the forces behind criminal justice in China, and
they are also not helpful in formulating well-reasoned political responses.
Such responses require a comprehensive knowledge of the whole of crimi
nal justice in China: its past and present, the underlying values and theo
ries, its practices and consequences, its capacities and failures, and, last
but not least, the human costs and experiences. The complex history of
criminal justice in China-what we actually can know as opposed to what
we imagine-is the subject of this book. An examination of China's crimi
nal justice system in the past will tell us something about its present and
also prepare us for the future by highlighting the major shifts and dynamics
that produced and continue to influence the administration of justice in
China.
In charting this sensitive, difficult, and partially unknown terrain, a his
torical approach will aid in understanding the overall role of criminal jus-
Introduction
2
tice in Chinese social life and its effects on both state and society. Seen as a
historical and social phenomenon, criminal justice is revealed as part of the
wider culture, shaping and being shaped by it. It says as much about the
society that holds trials and sentences offenders as it does about those indi
viduals brought before it. Criminal justice in China reflects fundamental
norms, core values, and significant social hierarchies and relationships in
modern Chinese society.
Crime, Punishment, and Justice
Justice is, as John Rawls has put it, "the first virtue of social institutions:'1
Institutions, no matter how efficient and well arranged, become weak and
dysfunctional if they are perceived as unjust. To achieve its objectives suc
cessfully, the administration of justice and dispute settlement must be ac
cepted as authoritative and legitimate, and it must also be seen as fair. Phi
losophers have distinguished between two ways of creating fair judgments
and compensation: corrective justice covers that which is due to a person as
punishment; distributive justice is that which is due by way of benefits and
burdens other than punishments.2 Criminal justice falls within the realm of
corrective justice. It aims at producing justice by way of amending a previ
ous injustice. The parties, as perpetrator and sufferer of the same injustice,
are the active and passive poles of a single wrong, which the law rectifies
and redeems by holding the perpetrator liable to the victim.
Society's response to socially proscribed wrongdoing usually consists in
the punishment of the offender. Pronouncing guilt and finding a correct
punishment are at the core of criminal justice. Punishment is one of the
oldest human institutions; virtually every society in history has imposed
some kind of penalty on those who offend against written and unwritten
rules.3 Beyond that, most religions, too, hold that those who offend against
god, or the gods, will be punished either in this world or the next. But pun
ishment is of course not the only way to react to crime. Other reactions
may include payment of compensation to the victim, expression of formal
censure, or attempts at reconciliation. Punishment is distinguished from
other responses by the hard treatment it imposes-most commonly, the
infliction of some pain or loss on the transgressor. Punishments thus need
to be justified exactly, because they involve doing things that are normally
considered to be wrong (depriving a person of life, property, or freedom).
