Deprivation of Liberty under Scrutiny

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has embarked on a dramatic and ongoing experiment with legal and institutional reform (gaige). The aim has been the creation of an efficient and modern justice system, responsive to social and economic change and proactive in protecting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) hold on political power. This has meant that over approximately three decades, the topic of reform has also served as the thematic cornerstone of academic analyses in the field of Chinese law and justice. While a number of studies have developed conceptual paradigms – the ‘rule of law’ most notably – to explain trajectories about ‘law’s empire’ in China (Peerenboom 2002; Lubman 2012), others have assessed reformist processes through empirical case studies (Balme and Dowdle 2009; Woo and Gallagher 2012). In this context, though, scholarly work on recent changes to the institutions that administer deprivation of liberty has visibly lagged behind.