Historically, opportunities for members of the public in China to observe criminal trials have been limited. Other than jurors and lay judges (“people’s assessors”), the public has rarely had opportunities to observe criminal trial proceedings in person. Along with China’s reform measures to increase judicial transparency, the move to broadcasting trials online via platforms like China Court Trial Online offers an invaluable opportunity for the public to observe trials. In this study, a fully recorded homicide trial in mainland China was shown to students enrolled in law majors (n=97) and non-law majors (n=86) from one Chinese university. Their evaluations of the trial proceedings were subsequently surveyed. This is the first known study that allows members of the public to watch a full-length trial and provide their assessments of criminal trial proceedings in China. The issues reported by students echo problems identified by scholars and shed significant light on potential lessons to be learned from public observation of Chinese criminal trials.
This article examines the juridical interactions between Christian congregations and local communities in late Qing Sichuan by tracing how extraterritoriality operated in everyday judicial practice. Moving beyond accounts centered on anti-Christian violence, it analyzes how Chinese converts, non-Christian litigants, Western missionaries, and Qing officials navigated the uncertainties that imperial encroachment brought to local adjudication. Drawing on county-level judicial cases, imperial documents, local gazetteers, and missionary accounts, the study shows how Chinese Christians learned to mobilize missionary-backed extraterritorial leverage to circumvent routine barriers to legal access, while non-Christians and local elites developed strategic countermeasures to cope with foreign interference. Rather than treating extraterritoriality solely as a colonial imposition, the article argues that it became embedded as an additional, treaty-produced dimension of judicial operation in local society. By foregrounding the agency of multiple social actors, this study offers a nuanced account of how extraterritoriality reshaped late Qing local justice.
This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two co-living houses in Shanghai, examines the sense of familial belonging among young Chinese adults residing in co-living arrangements. These youth frequently conceptualize their co-living environments as familial units, designating their roommates as family members (jiaren (sic)(sic)). Co-living, characterized by collective funding of communal goods, close interpersonal relationships, and egalitarian decision-making, aligns with the idealized familial values held by contemporary youth. However, this shared sense of family coexists with divergent and occasionally conflicting perspectives on family-related matters. This paradox highlights evolving conceptualizations of family that prioritize affective and supportive ties while deemphasizing blood relations and marital obligations. These shifting perceptions are shaped by the rise of neo-familism, state-endorsed family values, and processes of individualization. Consequently, co-living youth are expanding their understanding of family beyond kinship-based structures to include peer networks, signaling potential transformations to conventional conceptions of family among younger generations.
Why have existing developmental strategies failed to promote rural industrial development more effectively in many regions of China? This question cannot be fully answered by prevailing developmental state theory, which emphasizes the institutional conditions of embedded autonomy, market competition, and enterprise investment capacity, while overlooking the influence of informal property relations within industries. This article's case study of an industrial township in northern China demonstrates that informal property relations, tied to entrepreneurs' informal access to labor, land, and environmental resources, have been persistently maintained through socially embedded power interactions. These relations have contributed substantial profits to rural industries and greatly alleviated pressure on entrepreneurs, making them unwilling to reinvest profits into development activities. Instead, profits are allocated to simple industrial expansion or personal consumption. As a result, the developmental strategies fail to achieve their intended effects because of a lack of response from enterprises. Furthermore, this study examines two attempts by the government to formalize these property relations-the construction of industrial parks and more stringent environmental governance-and explains how their impact has been constrained. This research provides valuable insights for late-developing regions with lagging political and economic reforms and deepens our understanding of the substantive view of the economy.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a sweeping mass assault that shook the political foundations of China's Leninist party-state. But why was it called a "cultural revolution"? What, precisely, was "cultural" about Mao's last revolutionary endeavor? Focusing on the ideological and cultural struggles that preceded and shaped its early phase, this article challenges the prevailing narrative that assumes Mao conceived of the Cultural Revolution as an insurgent political movement from the outset. Instead, it contends that the movement initially took form as a radical "cultural revolution" in the literal sense-rooted in Mao's longstanding vision of ideological and cultural transformation. What began as a targeted intervention within the cultural domain, however, escalated into a far-reaching political upheaval and systemic crisis, ultimately exceeding Mao's original expectations. By reconstructing Mao's intent in historical context and treating "cultural revolution" as a distinct historiographical category, this article offers a more historically grounded account of the Cultural Revolution's origins and early dynamics.
