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This paper examines a recent debate at the highest level of China's politicolegal leadership on the application of the death penalty. The debate centers around the interpretation of a new criminal justice policy called "balancing leniency and severity" and around limiting the death penalty to all but the most egregious criminals.

This article explores the nature and function of trials and sentencing rallies as mediums of propaganda in Chinese criminal court work. It looks at trials and rallies as two means through which courts project images and messages outwards to a community of onlookers, spectators and participants. The theatrics of adjudication and sentencing carry images and messages about the State, order, legitimacy and the consequences of punishment. The educative and deterrence tasks of the court in trials and sentencing rallies are therefore perceived as part of a wider program of social control and socialization in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The main period under examination is a pivotal stage of legal history in the PRC, the first years of the post-Mao reform period in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This examination of trials and sentencing rallies will show that despite the two-decade long push to effect a new modernist legal culture based on professionalism, regularity and bureaucratic rationality, criminal justice practices in China have continued to rely on the crude theatrics of expressive punishment that have been employed since the days of revolution.

In the Xi Jinping era, it has become clear that the rule of law, as understood in the West, will not appear in China soon. But was this ever a likely option? This book argues China's legal system needs to be studied from an internal perspective, to take into account the characteristic architecture of China's Party-state. To do so, it addresses two key elements: ideology and organisation. Part One of the book discusses ideology and the law, exploring how the Chinese Communist Party conceives of the nature of law and its position within its broader range of policy tools. Part Two, on organisation and the law, reviews how these ideological principles manifest themselves in the application of law, as well as the reform of the Party-state. As such, it highlights how the Party's plans and approaches run counter to mainstream theoretical expectations, and advocates a greater attention to the inherent logic of the system itself.

This review examines the literature on procedural justice and the fair trial over the past two decades in the People's Republic of China. Part 1 gives a wide-angle view of the key political events and developments that have shaped the experience of procedural justice and the fair trial in contemporary China. It provides a storyline that explains the political environment in which these concepts have developed over time. Part 2 examines how scholars understand the legal structures of the criminal process in relation to China's political culture. Part 3 presents scholarly views on three enduring problems relating to the fair trial: the presumption of innocence, interrogational torture, and the role of lawyers in the criminal trial process. Procedural justice is a particularly pertinent issue today in China, because Xi Jinping's yifa zhiguo 依法治国 (governing the nation in accordance with the law) governance platform seeks to embed a greater appreciation for procedural justice in criminal justice decision-making, to correct a politicolegal tradition overwhelmingly focused on substantive justice. Overall, the literature reviewed in this article points to the serious limitations in overcoming the politicolegal barriers to justice reforms that remain intact in the system, despite nearly four decades of constant reform.

AbstractIn recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has declared that its governance
must dominate over all aspects of law-making and enforcement, declaring that its
leadership must be implemented across the entire process of governing the
country in accordance with the law. Contemporaneous to this new way of thinking
about the law-Party nexus is a propaganda push to integrate moral values into
the law. This paper is about moralizing governance in the Xi Jinping era. It
explores the ideology behind the promotion of this morals–law
integration, focusing on the Socialist Core Values in the legal realm under the
current Xi Jinping administration. We do so from two interrelated perspectives.
The first examines the relationship between law and morality. Here, we argue
that the Party's calls for a law–morality amalgam can be
understood as a form of "pan-moralism." The second looks at the
supremacy of Party rule, extending the theory of the "Leviathan"
proposed by Thomas Hobbes to take into account the Party's morality push.
This two-pronged argument enables us to assert that the Xi Jinping
administration is creating a "virtuous Leviathan."

AbstractThis review examines the literature on procedural justice and the fair trial over the past two decades in the People's Republic of China. Part 1 gives a wide-angle view of the key political events and developments that have shaped the experience of procedural justice and the fair trial in contemporary China. It provides a storyline that explains the political environment in which these concepts have developed over time. Part 2 examines how scholars understand the legal structures of the criminal process in relation to China's political culture. Part 3 presents scholarly views on three enduring problems relating to the fair trial: the presumption of innocence, interrogational torture, and the role of lawyers in the criminal trial process.Procedural justice is a particularly pertinent issue today in China, because Xi Jinping's yifa zhiguo 依法治国 (governing the nation in accordance with the law) governance platform seeks to embed a greater appreciation for procedural justice in criminal justice decision-making, to correct a politicolegal tradition overwhelmingly focused on substantive justice. Overall, the literature reviewed in this article points to the serious limitations in overcoming the politicolegal barriers to justice reforms that remain intact in the system, despite nearly four decades of constant reform.

XI JINPING AND THE PARTY leadership have been reshaping China's justice and security agendas to strengthen both the authoritarian rule of the Party and the authoritarian rule of law. They advocate what they call 'rule of law thinking' to rebuild public trust in the country's politico-legal institutions, which include courts, procuratorates (the institutions encompassing public investigators and prosecutors), police, national security and parapolicing agencies. This is a strategic shift, following a decade of weiwen or 'Stability Maintenance', a political program closely associated with the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao era that covers a range of politicolegal activities aimed at preventing and/or breaking up collective protests and dealing with court cases raised by individual complainants.

XI JINPING AND THE PARTY leadership have been reshaping China's justice and security agendas to strengthen both the authoritarian rule of the Party and the authoritarian rule of law. They advocate what they call 'rule of law thinking' to rebuild public trust in the country's politico-legal institutions, which include courts, procuratorates (the institutions encompassing public investigators and prosecutors), police, national security and parapolicing agencies. This is a strategic shift, following a decade of weiwen or 'Stability Maintenance', a political program closely associated with the Hu Jintao–Wen Jiabao era that covers a range of politicolegal activities aimed at preventing and/or breaking up collective protests and dealing with court cases raised by individual complainants.