Policing Chinese Politics: A History

Abstract

Policing Chinese Politics: A History. By Michael Dutton. Durhan, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 411p. $89.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. This engaging book offers prodigious empirical research on China's police from the 1930s to 2002 and a provocative perspective on Chinese politics. A short introduction and conclusion establish a theory that draws on Carl Schmitt to link Mao's question “Who are our enemies and who are our friends?” to the extraordinary police technologies that united the latter and defeated the former. The first four of five substantive chapters deal with policing politics during the Jiangxi Soviet era, the Yan'an era, the 1950s, and the Cultural Revolution. The last substantive chapter depicts the reform era's transition from politics to economics. The book sheds light on the origins of and prospects for contemporary Chinese politics, but also provides subtle tools for understanding what was more crudely labeled “totalitarianism.” Michael Dutton demonstrates that studying police technologies can yield important insight into politics in general. In an age when important leaders are again casting politics in Manichean terms, Dutton's tale is surely relevant, but how far his police perspective can be extended will remain controversial.