BOOK REVIEWS

Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China

If the performance of a legal system is dependent in part at least on popular attitudes, then we perhaps can learn about the prospects for particular legal systems by reference to popular literature about law and justice. Just as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House reflected widespread popular cynicism about the functioning of lawyers and law in Victorian England and the current popularity of Rumpole at the Bailey reflects a bemused fascination with the workings of the criminal justice system in contemporary England, so too does the rich legacy of Chinese literature on law reflect underlying social norms about law and the legal system. From the original detective novel about Judge Dee translated by Robert Van Gulik to the popularity of contemporary pulp fiction featuring honest judges, corrupt officials and devious criminals, we find in Chinese literature deeply held views about law and its social functions. Jeffrey Kinkley’s masterful study of law and literature in contemporary China reveals not only the depth but also the character of official and popular views about the role of law.

Eschewing the high-sounding discourse of “legal system literature” as misplaced in its assumptions about the existence of a legal system and in its distance from popular opinion, Kinkley prefers the term “crime fiction” to describe the popular novels, short stories and other depictions of crime and policing that have captured the popular imagination in contemporary China. With due recognition of historical antecedents, Kinkley begins his analysis during the 1978-80 period of relative liberalisation following the Third Plenum of the 11th CPC Central Committee. During this period when the regime was attempting to revive a legal system that had been under threat since the late 1950s and shelved altogether during the Cultural Revolution, the official propaganda apparatus used idealistic depictions of law and the legal system to convey official views on proper social and institutional behaviour. At a time when crime rates were escalating in China, the officially sanctioned crime fiction of the early 1980s reflected the state’s paternalistic views on the role of law in maintaining political and social order.

Kinkley explains the significance of crime fiction in post-Mao China by reference to conflicting influences from traditional and Republican China. Drawing on a rich array of sources, Kinkley explains the ways in which, despite official efforts to marginalise the role of law, a rich literature from Republican China, particularly works produced during what Kinkley refers to as the golden age of the Chinese detective story (1900-49), have significantly influenced post-Mao crime literature. Increased attention to Western-style institutions and law enforcement practices began to penetrate China during this period, and these in turn provided antecedents for post-Mao crime literature. Under the Communist regime, the influences of the past were threatened, however. Kinkley finds that “entire topics, genres and strata of fiction were manipulated and annihilated by politics”. During the Maoist period in particular, official ideological norms suppressed literary invention, as class struggle became the dominant theme.

Following Mao’s death, however, a limited opening of the literary environment emerged, although the state retained heavy control over the content of so-called “legal system literature” (fazhi wenxue). In the context of the social dislocation and crime problems that accompanied the political and economic reforms of the early Deng period, officially sanctioned crime fiction served primarily to further the didactic purposes of the regime. With further liberalisation in the mid-1980s, however, crime fiction took on a less ordered, more chaotic character. Conflicts between bureaucratic ideals, in which legal system literature was a vehicle for propagandising officially sanctioned norms about the function of law in post-Mao society, and the independent creative impulses of the literary community were emblematic of broader tensions between increased social freedoms and the regime’s continued concern with maintaining political control. Kinkley concludes that the autonomy and creativity of the literary community continued to develop despite attempts by the political regime to suppress them. He suggests that in many ways the literature on law after the mid-1980s reflected some of the most intense calls for further reform in the political and legal systems in such areas as criminal procedure, rights of defendants and the capacity of legal institutions to provide justice to marginalised sectors of society. While Kinkley suggests that with the expansion of the legal system and legal institutions in the 1990s, literary treatment of these has declined, he remains optimistic that the literary achievements of the post-Deng era will continue to pursue new inquiries and ideas about law and its role in contemporary China.

This useful and interesting book offers a model of interdisciplinary scholarship that draws together relatively distinct fields in ways that inform the reader and point to new avenues for inquiry. While non-specialists would be well advised to read this book in conjunction with contemporary works on Chinese literature (e.g., Geremie Barmé’s In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture) and law (e.g., Stanley Lubman’s Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao), Kinkley’s masterful work will be of interest to virtually all observers of contemporary China. Kinkley’s study of law and literature reminds us that life in China is not ordered by disciplinary boundaries, and offers an exceptional opportunity to appreciate the interplay between formal institutions and popular culture.