Public sentencing rallies in China: The symbolizing of punishment and justice in a socialist state

Abstract

This article explores the functions and format of the public sentencing rallyin China. The public sentencing rally is a judicial event in which the verdictand sentence of a criminal case already decided in court is announced publicly,in a venue such as a stadium or auditorium. Sentencing rallies provide an important organizational and operational avenue through which communicativeactions of blaming and shaming are constituted and relayed to their socialaudience. They can be convened for one individual or for a group of convictedcriminals, usually those convicted of serious crimes, crimes that attract somepublic attention or crimes that are targeted during anti-crime campaigns. Theirfunction is to educate and deter through a process of ritual and representation.They are a format in which the emotive representations of public shaming and gestures of moral indignation can be acted out. Rallies also represent to theirsocial audience, a conceptual framework through which to interpret thecharacteristics of judicial authority in post-1978 China. This aspect ofrepresentation involves two types of authority, the moral authority of thecourt to mete out popular justice and the institutional authority of the courtrepresented in the aspirational claims of institutional reform – proceduralpropriety, professionalism and the strict adherence to the law.