Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemA Chinese legal journal in transition( 2005-11)In this thesis I examine the popular Chinese legal magazine Woodpecker, which has been published since 1981. Woodpecker combines crime and police fiction with factual accounts of current legal cases and issues. Woodpecker’s long history has meant that it has undergone a number of major changes. I argue that Woodpecker has made these changes in response to the increasingly competitive media market in China, but that at the same time it is also trying to maintain its traditional target audience. I argue further that these changes reflect the changing perceptions of law and rights in modern China. I begin by describing the political, economic and social context in which Woodpecker emerged. It began as a way of raising consciousness of the socialist legal and policing system as it developed during the reform period: at the same time, it reflected a wave of interest in culture and literature. Woodpecker started its life as a literary publication, but it has become less focused on fiction and more on factual articles aimed at the general public. The change to a bi-monthly publication at the start of 2004 exemplifies this. I argue that this transition has occurred both because of the changes in economic climate (where the Chinese media has expanded, and publications are expected to make profits), and because of the public’s decreasing interest in matters cultural. (For complete abstract open the document)
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ItemReserving the right: contemporary rights defence movements in the People's Republic of China( 2010)Rights defence, or weiquan, has been a popular dispute resolution movement in China during the 1990s and 2000s, but has received little academic attention in the West. This dissertation argues for its significance in the development of law and of state-society relations in China. The dissertation examines the history of the term weiquan, then describes and analyses how various stakeholders have used it in practice. It shows that weiquan was first coined by the Chinese party-state as part of a process of promotion of various laws, and was thus used by government-affiliated organisations. Subsequently, first private citizens, then groups of citizens, then lawyers, appropriated the term as a means of dispute resolution. The subjects of citizen rights defence campaigns reflect the changing lives and priorities of Chinese citizens, both urban and rural. One specific emphasis is on the defence of private property rights, especially in the areas of consumer protection and the protection of housing and land. Rights defence is important not just because of the subjects of its campaigns, but also because of the strategies its activists have used. This dissertation demonstrates that rights defence campaigns have taken novel forms unprecedented in China. Some of the examples of this covered in the dissertation are the use of the Internet by rights campaigners, the development of “rights entrepreneurs” (or people who have set up businesses linked to rights defence), and the selection of representatives and leaders in rights defence campaigns. At first the party-state actively facilitated the appropriation of weiquan. However, this dissertation demonstrates that the idea of weiquan has become used as a tool to attack the party-state — specifically by lawyers and legal campaigners — and that the party-state has responded to this by censuring weiquan activists in a variety of different ways. This final idea leads into an assessment of rights defence as a concept. The dissertation argues that the existence of rights defence does not pose a direct threat to the power of the government or the authority of the Chinese Communist Party. As such, the dissertation does not argue that there is a clear causal link between the practice of weiquan and the potential outcome of democratisation or the development of a civil society. However, it does argue that rights defence is a valuable symbol of a developing social pluralism in China, and reflects the increasing capacity of citizens to shape their own discourse.