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Courts and Criminal Justice in Contemporary China. By Susan Trevaskes. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. xi, 227. $70.00 (cloth); $27.95 (paper).

2008; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 67; Issue: 02 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021911808000867

1752-0401

Harold M. Tanner,

Chinese history and philosophy

In April 2001, the Chinese Communist Party and government launched yet another draconian “Strike Hard” campaign against crime. Ever since the early 1980s, anticrime campaigns have aimed to bring about a fundamental change for the better in China's crime rates. None has reversed the trend toward increases in overall crime, in serious and violent offenses, and in the reemergence of organized crime. In this book, Susan Trevaskes gives us a concise, accessible, and thought-provoking description and analysis of the dynamics of China's anticrime campaigns and their relationship to the Communist Party's reform agenda as seen in the criminal courts, and particularly in the experience of the Baotou Intermediate Court in Inner Mongolia.Trevaskes' analysis is built around a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, she sees forces tending toward professionalism, independent administration of justice, legal reason, procedural propriety, and the strict application of law. In terms of the public performance of justice, Trevaskes sees this move toward professionalism in the rhetoric of legal reform, in the developing culture of trials and courtroom practice, and in symbolic gestures such as the decisions to hang the national seal rather than a portrait of Mao in the courtroom and to dress judges in black robes instead of military-style uniforms.On the other hand, she sees the continued strength of Maoist principles and practices whose “shelf-life,” she remarks, should have expired in 1976. These include “morally charged and emotive practices of crime control,” “an authoritarian style of justice administration manifest in the coercive strategies of crime campaigns,” “Maoist political logic,” mutual coordination of the courts with the public security and procuratorate, “law as an instrument of social engineering,” and, above all, the fact that criminal law and the courts are still required by the party-state to “play a coercive role in the domain of social control under the leadership and tight direction of the Party” (pp. 12, 15, 16, 22, 32, 41). In contemporary practice, the “Maoist” side of criminal justice informs the theatrical sentencing rallies that Trevaskes describes and analyzes in chapter 3 and the planning and execution of anticrime campaigns.Having laid out the fundamental contradiction underlying contemporary Chinese criminal justice, Trevaskes then devotes much of her book (chapters 4–7) to an exploration of how the contradiction worked itself out in practice during the seemingly constant anticrime campaigns for which the party has mobilized the legal system since 1980. In essence, she sees the regime's fixation on achieving social stability, which it thinks is essential to continued economic growth, as significantly undercutting the impetus toward professionalization. Her sources, particularly the internally published Annals of the Baotou Courts, allow Trevaskes to take a more “grassroots” approach to the “Strike Hard” and other anticrime campaigns than previous studies, which have focused on the national level. She also does a superb job of explaining, in plain language and in an organized fashion, the major campaigns, when they took place, what the targets were, and how they played out.In her analysis of the campaigns and their significance for Chinese criminal justice (and for the courts in particular), Trevaskes shows clearly how techniques such as the setting of quotas and the “joint handling” of cases by the public security, procuratorates, and courts, as well as the rhetoric of the campaigns, hark back to the campaigns of the 1950s, including the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Leap Forward. But she also shows how practical constraints—lack of trained personnel, equipment, and even courtrooms and the unwillingness of local governments to fund the courts—have contributed to the court system's difficulty in attaining the degree of professionalism that has been one of the goals of China's reformist leaders since 1979.If, as Trevaskes suggests, the court system's lack of money, equipment, and trained personnel is a factor in its continued lack of professionalism, the implication is that further investment in these areas could lead to a decline in the “Maoist” techniques that permeate the anticrime campaigns (sentencing rallies, joint handling of cases, “flexible” interpretation of law under party guidance) and an increase in professionalism. A number of Western organizations, including the Ford Foundation, have made considerable investment in training Chinese judicial personnel; it would have been interesting if Trevaskes had briefly discussed these efforts and given some assessment of their efficacy (or lack thereof). She does see some reason for optimism in the fact that the court staff in Baotou and across China are better educated and better equipped than in the past, but she also notes that the party continues to see law as an instrument to be wielded for political ends, a “performative act on display in anti-crime campaigns” (p. 205), and professionalism, procedural openness and fairness will continue to play second fiddle to campaign techniques.