2.1 History, change, and continuity

While suspended execution has become a topic of interest in international policy circles following its increased use in the early twenty-first century, the practice itself has a much longer history in China. Scholars have noted the strong similarities between contemporary suspended execution and the death-penalty system of imperial China. ^{Footnote 40} In imperial China, every death sentence handed down throughout the empire was sent to the Board of Punishments in the capital, which would ultimately refer the decision to the emperor with a recommendation of either immediate execution or delay until consideration at an annual review (also called the autumn assizes, or qiushen). During annual review, cases were divided into categories, with some categories presumptively meriting a reduction in punishment. One category, deferred execution, is particularly resonant: the sentence was typically suspended for two years, after which it was generally converted to a lesser punishment. ^{Footnote 41}

Suspended execution traces its more recent roots in the early history of the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”). Well before the CCP gained control of China and established the PRC, the Party used forms of reprieve in wartime areas. ^{Footnote 42} Following the founding of the PRC (1949–present), Party leaders immediately sought to consolidate power through the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–53). ^{Footnote 43} The Campaign mobilized a nationwide effort to ferret out perceived state enemies and led to the execution of more than 700,000 people. ^{Footnote 44} As the death toll mounted, Mao Zedong issued a directive that execution

This directive became a guiding penalty and was eventually integrated into the PRC’s first codified Criminal Law (1979) more than 25 years later. ^{Footnote 46}

Although the 1979 Criminal Law was promulgated after the end of the Cultural Revolution, it retained the strong ideological flavour of the PRC’s socialist origins. Counter-revolution continued to be a crime, re-education through labour was a criminal justice staple, and repentance remained the criterion for commutation of a prisoner’s suspended death sentence. In 1997, the Criminal Law underwent major revision. The crime of counter-revolution was replaced with the crime of endangering state security and overtly political revolutionary language was supplanted with increasingly technocratic or legalistic language. In place of repentance, the 1997 Criminal Law specified that a person’s suspended death sentence would be converted after two years so long as the offender did not commit a new “intentional crime” (guyi fanzui).

Since the last major revision to the Criminal Law in 1997, China’s legislature has repeatedly amended the law on suspended execution, primarily in order to address a perceived gulf in proportionality between suspended and immediate death sentences. Traditionally, prisoners who had suspended-execution sentences converted to imprisonment typically served less than two decades in prison; concerns about sentencing disparities led the legislature to introduce beefed-up terms of incarceration for suspended execution in the eighth (2011) and ninth (2015) Amendments to the Criminal Law. These more punitive measures effectively raise the minimum possible prison sentence following suspended execution by five years, prohibit sentence reductions for some types of repeat offenders, and—for the first time in Chinese history—introduce the possibility of a whole-life sentence (life without parole) in capital corruption cases. ^{Footnote 47}

The long history of suspended execution covers a variety of legal regimes—imperial, revolutionary, liberal-legal—in which the penalty has assumed different valences. A number of elements remain consistent through the arc of this practice. First, throughout its history, suspended execution has remained (nominally) a capital sentence, situated within the law as a form of administration of the death penalty. This is the case despite the fact that suspended execution is intended to act as a diversionary sentence; the typical outcome for the offender is presumptively not death, but a lesser punishment. Second, suspended execution dictates a delay before a final decision regarding execution is rendered. However, an offender is not in limbo for an indefinite amount of time. Third, suspended execution provides criteria for determining whether to enact or convert the death sentence at the end of the period.

2.2 China, its neighbours, and regional penal practice

China is the originator of the practice of suspended execution, so an obvious first place to look for explanations for the where, why, and how of introduction of suspended execution elsewhere lies in China’s own active international policy decisions. The literature on legal transmission and diffusion identifies a number of ways that countries intentionally or inadvertently promote the adoption of domestic legal practices into other jurisdictions. ^{Footnote 48} Most directly, powerful states may export legal policies abroad overtly through coercive practices such as colonialism. Colonial Britain, for example, pushed the adoption of its criminal law and penal institutions both inside and outside its colonies. (The first prison in mainland China, for example, was built by the British in a treaty concession in Shanghai. ^{Footnote 49} ) Less overtly, powerful states may promote international frameworks that encourage the reproduction of legal practices abroad. The logic of US neoliberalism, for example, created economic and political carrots and sticks that fostered the proliferation of American penal practices throughout much of the developing world. ^{Footnote 50}

Is China pushing suspended execution on its neighbours? China’s own historical development over the long haul points to some of these dynamics with regional neighbours in the past. Taiwan was annexed by the Qing Dynasty empire in 1683, subjecting Taiwan to Chinese legal rule by force in until Japan occupied the island in 1895. In Sino-Vietnamese relations, China has been the larger and more influential actor through three millennia, in periods of both conflict and co-operation. ^{Footnote 51} In more recent years, China has projected soft power beyond its neighbours and across the world through infrastructural initiatives such as One Belt, One Road.

But, while the PRC does project its power aboard, it does not have a history of exporting legal practices. China’s current political regime, the CCP, has an ambivalent relationship to law as a mode of governance. ^{Footnote 52} China is openly critical of institutions that aim to replicate US-style legal norms abroad and while, in other areas, China has created its own versions of US foreign policy institutions that it critiques, it has not yet done so with law. Within this project, the authors found no evidence that China is promoting—or even considering—the practice of suspended execution outside its borders. The Chinese academic and policy literatures do not indicate interest by either Chinese state or non-state actors such as lawyers or academics in the transmission of suspended execution elsewhere. The authors interviewed prominent Chinese criminal justice scholars and legal officials. Interviewees uniformly showed no knowledge of or interest in suspended-execution practices outside China, and expressed scepticism that China was promoting suspended execution outside its borders. ^{Footnote 53} No person interviewed in China, nor in any of the other jurisdictions, could point to any Chinese event or initiative—such as a China-sponsored judicial tour or programme—encouraging suspended execution abroad. These findings indicate that explanations for the where, why, and how of suspended execution lie outside the People’s Republic. We turn now to those other places.

4.1 Background

Vietnam is an active executioner state. Exact data are hard to come by because Vietnam is one of only three states (along with Belarus and, notably, China) where death-penalty statistics are state secrets. ^{Footnote 99} Nonetheless, partial data over recent decades suggest that Vietnam executes frequently. ^{Footnote 100} In 2018, Vietnam disclosed that it executed at least 85 people that year, leading Amnesty International to rank it among the world’s five most prolific executioner states. ^{Footnote 101} On a per-capita basis, Vietnam may now rival China in its frequency of execution.

After Taiwan, Vietnam is arguably the most obvious place to look for the influence of Chinese penal practices on capital punishment outside the PRC. ^{Footnote 102} The relationship between the two countries is asymmetric, as “China has always been a much more important presence for Vietnam than Vietnam has been for China.” ^{Footnote 103} This influence is often noted in areas of law and policy. ^{Footnote 104} In their survey of capital punishment in Asia, Johnson and Zimring note that:

China’s direct influence on Vietnam’s penal practice goes back thousands of years. ^{Footnote 106} The Le Dynasty’s (1428–1788) Hong Duc Code of 1483 borrows heavily from Chinese dynastic codes. ^{Footnote 107} The penal provisions in the 1812 Gia Long Code, the legal code of Vietnam’s last dynasty (Nguyen Dynasty, 1802–1945), are a “faithful copy of China’s [Qing Dynasty] code,” which itself contained extensive capital-punishment measures, including a system of deferred execution that stands as a precursor to China’s contemporary suspended-execution penalty. ^{Footnote 108} China’s influence on Vietnam’s penal law waned as French civil law dominated during the colonial period (1858–1945). However, under Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnam developed a close relationship with the CCP extending through re-unification in 1975. Under socialism, the two countries were frequently described to be as close as “lips and teeth.” ^{Footnote 109} Like the PRC, the early Socialist Republic of Vietnam (“SRV”) had no codified criminal law. And, like the PRC, which codified its criminal law in 1979 as part of comprehensive social and economic reform, Vietnam codified its first Criminal Code since 1812 in 1985 amidst the Doi Moi reforms. ^{Footnote 110} The 1985 SRV Criminal Code that emerged during these reforms marks the beginning of contemporary capital punishment in Vietnam. ^{Footnote 111}

While many aspects of the 1985 SRV Criminal Code bear strong resemblance to China, no suspended-execution provision is included in the Code. One scholar writing about China’s influence on the Code at the time of introduction observed that

The SRV Code has been revised several times since 1985, notably in 1999. The 1999 Amendment reduced the number of capital eligible offences from 44 to 22 and further limited the extent of capital-punishment policy. ^{Footnote 113} Again, it did not include any provisions resembling suspended execution.

4.2 2015 Amendment

In 2015, Vietnam introduced significant amendments to its Criminal Code. Among the most hot-button topics on the revision agenda was capital punishment. Debates on the amendments highlighted a significant policy rift among Vietnamese leaders on the future of the death penalty. On the one hand, some leaders—notably within the judiciary—wanted to reduce the scope of capital punishment and bring Vietnam’s capital regime in line with international law and human rights norms. ^{Footnote 114} On the other hand, many policy-makers remained committed to the death penalty as part of a tough-on-crime deterrence strategy. The 2015 Amendment ultimately narrowed the formal legal scope of the death penalty somewhat, reducing the number of capital eligible crimes by seven and tightening the definition of “particularly serious crimes” for which the death penalty may be applied. ^{Footnote 115}

Among the most contested capital-punishment changes in the draft amendment was a provision for the suspension of the death penalty in capital cases in which the offender returns stolen assets. Corruption is a serious problem in Vietnam and a representative of the Ministry of Justice who advocated for the policy indicated that the state recovers only slightly more than 10% of stolen assets. ^{Footnote 116} The debate over the measure became a microcosm of the larger capital-punishment debate. Deputy Minister of Justice Dinh Trung Tung described the proposal as being in line with judicial-reform goals of reducing capital punishment. ^{Footnote 117} Meanwhile, in a 2015 newspaper roundup of opinions on amending capital-punishment provisions, Dr Nguyen Tat Vien, Permanent Member of the Central Judicial Reform Steering Committee, supported maintaining capital punishment for corruption, arguing that corruption causes widespread social harm and damages the prestige of the state. ^{Footnote 118} Other officials worried that the provision would be tantamount to buying justice. Nguyen Duc Chung, director of the Hanoi Police Department, stated:

Ultimately, a measure to divert capital punishment in cases involving reparation was included in the 2015 Amendment. The mechanism is defined under Article 40(3), which also prohibits the execution of pregnant woman, mothers of children under three, and people who are 75 or older. Article 40(3)(c) provides that, in cases where a death sentence is pronounced, it shall not be executed if

Article 40(4) indicates that, if the death sentence is commuted, it shall be replaced by life imprisonment (which in Vietnam, as in China, is a sentence of indeterminate length that may be further commuted to a fixed term). ^{Footnote 120} Article 63(6) on commutations clarifies that, even with further commutations, a convicted person initially sentenced to death must serve at least 30 years in prison.

The procedure for applying Article 40(3)(c) is not immediately clear. The Code provides no further detail on the definitions of “closely cooperates,” nor on the timeframe within which the prisoner must carry out such mitigation. The proviso that the condemned return the money “after being sentenced” suggests that this is a post-conviction sentence conversion. However, the two other parts of Article 40(3), which prohibit executions of pregnant women, mothers of children under three, and people 75 and older, would most likely be assessed before sentencing. Article 40(3)(c) also implies that authorities might have reason to delay execution so as to encourage reparations, but no timeline for this process is specified. Nor is it clear who initiates the process.

4.3 China’s influence

Law-makers explicitly pointed to China in debates on the introduction of Article 40(3)(c). For example, Tran Van Dung, Deputy Director of the Department of Administrative Criminal Law at the Ministry of Justice, told reporters that the ministry looked to China for anti-corruption measures, specifically regarding the measure to defer capital punishment if assets were collected. ^{Footnote 121} The Vietnamese debate also bears an uncanny parallel to debates taking place at the same time in China, where asset recovery is also a priority. ^{Footnote 122} China’s National People’s Congress considered abolishing capital punishment for corruption and bribery as part of both the eighth (2011) and ninth (2015) amendments to the Criminal Law. ^{Footnote 123} With competing factions unwilling to either remove corruption from the roster of capital offences or keep it on the books in unmodified form, China’s legislature settled on a compromise, introducing a new, one-off sanction—whole-life imprisonment—for corruption. Corruption remains the only one of China’s 46 capital eligible crimes for which this punishment is available. Notably, while whole-life imprisonment may intuitively appear as a sentencing alternative to suspended execution, it is in fact structured as a sentencing enhancement to a suspended-execution penalty. In order to impose the whole-life sentence for corruption, a Chinese court must therefore first determine that corruption meets the threshold for capital eligibility, then determine that the crime nonetheless warrants a suspension of the death sentence, and then finally attach an enhancement specifying a whole-life sentence. ^{Footnote 124}

4.4 Conclusion

Is Vietnam’s corruption measure a form of Chinese suspended execution? Previous scholarship has suggested in passing that it might be. ^{Footnote 125} Although Vietnam’s form of suspended execution looks somewhat different from the PRC’s, it meets our stated definition, in that the formal death sentence is still imposed by the Vietnamese authorities, subject to a non-indefinite period of delay in execution, with the latter conditional upon the actions of the defendant while incarcerated. Despite the distinct way in which it is designed to operate, limited solely to the white-collar offences of embezzlement and bribery, the connection between Vietnam’s provision and Chinese practice cannot be dismissed. Vietnam evidently looked to China for a compromise penalty that could divert executions and recover assets in corruption cases. In China, that penalty is embedded within an overarching regime of suspended execution. Vietnam did not adopt suspended execution for all capital crimes, but nonetheless modelled a practice that may be situated within China’s suspended-execution paradigm.

5.1 Background to criminal-law reform in Indonesia

Plans to revise Indonesia’s Criminal Code (Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana, or KUHP), with its attendant death-penalty provisions, are almost as old as the country itself. ^{Footnote 132} The KUHP has only been amended nine times since its promulgation in 1915 as the Wetboek van Strafrecht voor Nederlandsch-Indie (Criminal Code for the Netherlands Indies) under Dutch rule. ^{Footnote 133} Redrafting attempts began in earnest in 1980 and resulted in the first complete draft in 1993. ^{Footnote 134} However, the 1993 draft was never brought before the Indonesian legislature (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat—People’s Representative Council, or DPR) and therefore never became law. The current version was introduced by the government in the DPR in 2013, and is still being revised and debated. ^{Footnote 135} At the time of writing, progress appears to have stalled in light of domestic and international criticism of several controversial articles within the Bill, notably those criminalizing sex outside marriage, same-sex relations, insulting the president (lèse-majesté), and abortion (other than in cases of medical emergency or rape). ^{Footnote 136} Nevertheless, the chances remain high that, in the near future, Indonesian law-makers will pass an entirely new Criminal Code—Indonesia’s first in more than a century.

Within the present RKUHP draft, the implementation of the death penalty as a judicial punishment is governed by Book 1 (General Principles), whereas the death penalty also appears as a punishment for individual crimes listed in Book 2 (Crimes). If the DPR proceeds to enact the current draft or something close to it, there will be three main changes to the general implementation of the death penalty within Book 1. All three changes show an effort to balance retentionist and abolitionist perspectives in the Indonesian legislature, government drafting body, and among the broader public. ^{Footnote 137}

The RKUHP’s first change will be the categorization of the death penalty as its own unique “special punishment” (pidana khusus) to be applied “alternatively, as a last resort” (Articles 67, 98) rather than as one of the “principal punishments” (pidana pokok) or “supplementary punishments” (pidana tambahan) (Articles 64–66) within Book 1. ^{Footnote 138} In the existing KUHP, the death penalty is listed as a “principal punishment” (Article 10). Nevertheless, several sources cast doubt on whether this re-categorization would have any substantial impact on death-penalty practice in the future. ^{Footnote 139} The death penalty is, after all, still retained as a maximum punishment for a wide variety of crimes in Book 2, including treason, premeditated murder, robbery resulting in death, and a variety of drug offences.

For present purposes, of greater potential significance are the second and third major changes in death-penalty regulations proposed by the RKUHP. These are the provision of a new “probationary” death sentence and the president’s ability to reconsider a clemency rejection. All three moves (designation as a special and alternative punishment, suspended execution, and clemency reversal) are now relatively uncontroversial among law-makers and the government’s drafting body. ^{Footnote 140} It is therefore likely that the probationary death sentence will shortly become part of Indonesia’s formal death-penalty scheme.

5.2 The probationary death sentence and clemency-reconsideration provisions

The new provision shares many similarities with the Chinese provision and merits quoting at length. As at September 2019, the relevant sections of the RKUHP draft read as follows:

In Bahasa Indonesia, the probationary death sentence described in Article 100, above, is widely known as pidana mati bersyarat (a conditional death sentence) or pidana mati penundaan (a suspended death sentence). ^{Footnote 141} How it will operate is as follows. A judge passing the death sentence, whether at trial in a district court or on appeal, may suspend the execution of the sentence for ten years (but for no lesser or greater period), based on the criteria outlined in subsection (1)(a)(b)(c), including taking account of the community’s reaction to the crime “wherever possible.” ^{Footnote 142} The word “may” in Article 100(1) suggests that the currently applicable death sentence, with no suspension period, will continue to exist alongside the probationary death sentence. ^{Footnote 143} The prisoner’s attitude and behaviour will then be observed by prison officials during the course of the ten-year probation period, which begins after the judicial decision attains “permanent legal force,” meaning either when the Supreme Court has disposed of the cassation appeal or when the prisoner has abandoned appeals or is out of time (Butt and Lindsey, Reference Butt and Tim2018, p. 99). The present subsection (3) suggests that death-row prisoners’ final procedural options—case reopening by the Supreme Court (peninjauan kembali) and petitioning for executive clemency to the president of Indonesia (grasi)—will take place during the currency of the ten-year probation period (Pascoe Reference Pascoe2019b).

After ten years’ detention, a second decision becomes due, on whether the probation period has been successful, based on the criteria set out in subsection (4). The legislation implies that, for cases where courts choose the probationary-death-sentence option, executions will be few and far between. ^{Footnote 144} The September 2019 draft lists the president of Indonesia as the final decision-maker on sentence reduction, in contrast with the minister of law and human rights, who bore this responsibility within the 2000, 2013, and 2016 drafts. It was only in 2017 that the president assumed the final decision-making power over mitigation, and only in the 2018 draft that the Supreme Court was called upon to provide mandatory advice to the president, mirroring the position for executive clemency, in Article 14(1) of the Constitution of Indonesia 1945. Indeed, several interviewees suggested that the reason for the shift to the president as final decision-maker is that only the head of state should have the power to alter a finalized judicial decision, as with the clemency power in Indonesia’s Constitution. Moreover, given that the Supreme Court’s decision to leave the death sentence in place on appeal (or to impose it in the first place) is the ruling being affected, the Supreme Court itself must be consulted. ^{Footnote 145}

The second means of restricting execution that the RKUHP proposes might be more appropriately labelled a “second chance for clemency” from the president, albeit without a formal request or petition. If, despite the prisoner not receiving a probation period as described above, the death penalty is not executed for a total of ten years (for any reason, other than due to escape from prison), then the president may alter the death sentence to life imprisonment by decree. This provision serves a redemptive function similar to that of the probation period in Article 100. Article 101 provides the prisoner a lifeline long after clemency has been rejected, although this new presidential power should be interpreted as a concession to humanity after a long period spent on death row, rather than as a legislative attempt at incentivizing rehabilitation. ^{Footnote 146} Current death-row prisoners are restricted to a single opportunity to apply for clemency, and the Indonesian president one opportunity to grant it, even if a prisoner has not been executed after many years on death row. ^{Footnote 147} The wording of Article 101 suggests that the section may benefit existing long-term death-row prisoners, and not merely those prosecuted or sentenced after the Bill is passed. ^{Footnote 148}

5.3 China’s influence

What is the origin of the reforms contemplated by Articles 100 and 101? Indonesia’s proposed probationary death sentence certainly bears a strong circumstantial resemblance to China’s suspended death sentence—a similarity that Indonesian scholars themselves have noted. ^{Footnote 149} This resemblance notwithstanding, one prevailing—and mistaken—view is that the drafters of the RKUHP borrowed the idea from the Constitutional Court in Sianturi v. State—a 2007 ruling upholding the constitutionality of capital punishment for drug offences. ^{Footnote 150} In his opinion in Sianturi, Chief Justice Jimly Asshiddiqie did suggest a number of potential death-penalty reforms to the legislature including a ten-year probation period and the designation as a “special” punishment. ^{Footnote 151} However, in reality, these suggestions are themselves borrowed, appearing in earlier drafts of the RKUHP as early as 1993. This point is openly acknowledged in the judgment itself, which cites expert opinion by Indonesian criminal-law scholars Dr Rudi Satrio and Dr Mudzakir, referring to the contemporaneous RKUHP draft. ^{Footnote 152}

So where did the Indonesian proposal for a “probationary” death sentence come from? It came from China. Indonesian policy-makers may in fact have learned about China’s use of suspended execution in 1980, at the Sixth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, in Caracas, Venezuela. Seventy-four national delegations to the Congress presented data, outlining, among other matters, various legal tools to make capital punishment more humane. Among these mitigatory options were methods to delay execution or to mitigate the penalty altogether. ^{Footnote 153} There is no documentary evidence that the list of measures presented included the PRC’s sentence of suspended execution. However, both Chinese and Indonesian delegations were present at the Congress. ^{Footnote 154} In a conspicuous coincidence, the PRC had just promulgated its first Criminal Law (1979) the previous year and, as discussed above, suspended execution features prominently in it. It is likely, although we have no direct evidence to support this claim, that the Indonesian delegation left the Congress replete with new policy ideas such as to suspend the execution of death sentences for a limited period of time while observing prisoner rehabilitation.

Regardless of whether Indonesian policy-makers first encountered suspended execution in Caracas in 1980 or slightly later, they did get the idea from China. Interviewees confirm that the suspended-execution provisions that first appeared in the 1993 draft of the Indonesian RKUHP were based upon research on the 1979 PRC Criminal Law conducted by Professor Muladi ^{Footnote 155} and his fellow drafters during the mid-1980s. ^{Footnote 156} Whether the original catalyst for its adoption was an earlier interaction at the UN Caracas Congress or not, the history of the proposed probationary death sentence may therefore be traced directly back to Article 43 of the 1979 PRC Criminal Law, as well as earlier drafts of what eventually became the 1997 PRC Criminal Law. ^{Footnote 157} In adapting the idea from the PRC, ^{Footnote 158} during the 1980s and early 1990s, the Indonesian drafting team saw a ten-year probationary period as an ideal way to balance retentionist and abolitionist perspectives among different drafters. ^{Footnote 159}

While the PRC may have been an inspiration for Indonesia’s early death-penalty-reform proposals, there is scant evidence to link the present Article 101, enabling prisoners with a “second chance” at clemency, with PRC policy. Instead, to a certain extent, this provision codifies a long-established Indonesian practice whereby prisoners whose clemency appeals have been rejected by previous presidents are left on death row indefinitely if their execution is not deemed a political priority. ^{Footnote 160} Although the Article 101 provision loosely resembles the situation in several common-law jurisdictions whereby the courts have barred executions on human-dignity grounds, following excessive delay, ^{Footnote 161} it is instead an Indonesian domestic-policy invention, designed to prevent “double punishment.” ^{Footnote 162} In any case, the Indonesian drafting body could not possibly have borrowed this policy idea from the PRC itself, given that China has never made functional use of executive clemency in death-penalty cases since 1949. ^{Footnote 163}

5.4 Conclusion

As with the situation in Vietnam, we can see the long shadow cast by the PRC in recent Indonesian death-penalty-policy debates. Yet, the PRC influence on suspended-execution proposals in Indonesia seems both attenuated and unintentional. Drafters of the RKUHP “borrowed” the idea of a death-penalty probation period from the PRC so early on that many contemporary commentators no longer recognize its origins. As with other key elements of Indonesia’s capital-punishment system, such as execution by firing squad, ^{Footnote 164} and the president’s constitutional power to grant clemency to death-row convicts, ^{Footnote 165} the probationary-death-sentence model has been adopted from outside of Indonesia. The frequency and diversity of Indonesia’s borrowing practices in the area of capital punishment do not indicate that there is anything particular, or particularly important, about China’s penal influence there. Balancing different political positions on the death penalty and finding a unique retentionist solution has been endorsed as the “Indonesian way,” ^{Footnote 166} reflecting a deep-seated cultural preference for collective decision-making and “consensual deliberation.” ^{Footnote 167} However, as this section has demonstrated, one of the central pillars of proposed death-penalty reform in Indonesia does not have indigenous origins—it is, in fact, a transplant from another jurisdiction further north—the PRC.