Propagating Justice through Court and Prosecution Work in China

Abstract

This article surveys the performative function of criminal justice practices in contemporary China. It explores this function in the context of the Harmonious Society agenda and its accompanying Stability Maintenance imperative in the decade of the 2000s. It examines three initiatives connected to promoting the harmony and stability agendas that were promulgated by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) and Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP). These initiatives carried distinctive messages about how justice authorities were expected to dispense justice under the banner of Harmonious Society and Stability Maintenance. They provided a rhetorical framework, a new visual and conceptual space, for the SPC and SPP to promote the imperatives of stability and harmony-building. Overall, the article observes how this performative role is integral to maintaining the close link between law and politics and to sustaining the politico-legal culture upon which justice practices are based in China.