Ideology and organisation in Chinese law: towards a new paradigm for legality

Asian Studie

Female Membership in the Black-Society Style Criminal Organizations: Evidence From a Female Prison in China

From the 1970s onwards, women’s participation in gangs in the mainstream Western social contexts has been increasingly researched. However, the experiences of women in other cultural settings are rarely discussed. This qualitative study focuses on female members of the black-society style criminal organizations (BSSCO) in China. It starts with reviewing literature on female gang membership and on BSSCO so as to locate its discussions in the international criminological framework. This is followed by a methodology section, and then it analyses the empirical findings. This article seeks to provide some theoretical insights into the construction of female criminal membership in broader social contexts

Judicial Discretion and Death Penalty Reform in China: Drug Transportation and Homicide as Exemplars of Two Reform Paths

This paper focuses on Chinese death penalty reform in relation to two common crimes for which the punishment of death is commonly applied in China: drug transportation and homicide. It looks at how the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) has led the way in reforming death sentencing in these areas by encouraging lower courts to use a ‘suspended’ death sentence rather than an ‘immediate execution’. SPC guidance mechanisms including guiding cases and sentencing guidelines are the conduit through which reform has been achieved. These mechanisms help to corral local discretionary powers to encourage judges to recognize case circumstances that attract mitigated punishment. These mechanisms therefore allow local judges to treat many homicide and drug transportation cases as intrinsically less socially harmful than other cases, while at the same time, preserving the status of homicide and drug transportation as capital offences

Criminal Justice Reform in the Xi Jinping Era

This paper reviews current criminal justice reforms that have been initiated in recent years under the governance platform Governing the Nation in Accordance with the Law [yifa zhiguo]. These initiatives are helping to reframe criminal justice processes to correspond with the broad governance intentions of President Xi Jinping: finessing center-local power relations, making the authorities in the justice system more accountable for their decision-making, and improving procedures that aim to bring about greater fairness and efficiency. We examine these ongoing reforms in two main areas: the handling of minor crimes and the punishment of serious offenses. We find that yifa zhiguo and the reforms made in its name continue to reflect a highly legalist and instrumentalist vision of law whose goal is to enhance Party-state governance to control dissent and crime more effectively through criminal law, to enhance politico-legal institutional credibility, and, ultimately, to sustain Party supremacy and social stability

Framing the Stability Imperative

The studies in this volume make apparent the activist disposition of China’s legal institutions in the era of Harmonious Society and Stability Maintenance. This disposition has enabled the Party-state to legitimize important changes in the practices and policies of courts, governments and security organs on the basis of a certain political narrative about the imperative of social stability. Political narrative, expressed particularly through Harmonious Society and Stability Maintenance discourse, has enabled the Party-state to reframe and reformulate justice and security practices to accommodate its place in leading the country through uncertain times of social upheaval that accompanies rapid economic growth

Justice: The China Experience

TOC and Chapter 1 available.Claims about a pursuit of justice weave through all periods of China's modern history. But what do authorities mean when they refer to 'justice' and do Chinese citizens interpret justice in the same way as their leaders? This book explores how certain ideas about justice have come to be dominant in Chinese polity and society, and how some conceptions of justice have been rendered more powerful and legitimate than others. This book's focus on 'how' justice works incorporates a concern about the processes that lead to the making, un-making and re-making of distinct conceptions of justice. Investigating the processes and frameworks through which certain ideas about justice have come to the political and social forefront in China today, this innovative work explains how these ideas are articulated through spoken performances and written expression by both the party-state and its citizenry

Detention and Its Reforms in the PRC

This article reviews forms of detention and their reforms in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). We examine the changing scope and uses of both administrative and criminal detention powers in the reform period and the impact of changing politics, ideology, and law in reform of both detention powers and institutions

Opportunities and Challenges for Legislative and Institutional Reform of Detention in China

Throughout this volume, we have used the word ‘reform’ to refer to the changes to legislation governing deprivation of liberty in contemporary China, as well as to the institutions responsible for enforcing such legislation. As many other words do, ‘reform’ carries two distinct connotations, which depend on the ideological and cultural context of the speaker. For most western scholars who are active in the field of China studies, the word ‘reform’ conjures up the idea of a teleological march from Marxism to liberal modernity. This connotation is absent from the word ‘gaige’, the Chinese original for ‘reform’ which lacks such a directional element. Because of this, ‘reform’ is a term all those who, in China, write or speak about detention often want to use cautiously, as it belongs to two distinct universes of meaning at the same time