Klaus Mühlhahn . Criminal Justice in China: A History . Cambridge : Harvard University Press . 2009 . Pp. 365. $29.95.

Abstract

This book is a splendid survey of an important subject. Klaus Mühlhahn's focus is primarily on the institutional practice of punishment in twentieth-century China. Discussions of the other aspects of the criminal justice system—the development of the court system, the spread of new forms of legal consciousness, the professionalization of legal representation, and so on—appear, if at all, only to provide the supplementary context to the main concerns of the study. The complex history of penal practices in imperial China, too, is confined to a single chapter under the suggestive title of “The Right Degree of Pain,” which sets the scene for the examination in detail of the changes of the twentieth century. Still, Mühlhahn has set himself a challenging agenda. This book, he notes, “examines not only how justice is handled in legal procedures but also how it operates in political, social, and cultural terms: embodied in power mechanisms, traditions, value systems, ideas, and social structure” (p. 4). He intends “to bring to the fore the complexity of human institutions and the ambiguity of human agency in history” (p. 10). Furthermore, although Mühlhahn acknowledges that the use of the testimonies of survivors to reconstruct the experience of prisoners raises “fundamental issues” of representing and interpreting history, he still gives voice to those who were victimized and traumatized by the Chinese criminal justice system (pp. 9, 13).