Kam C. Wong is a prolific writer on Chinese police and in this new book he continues to explore this new frontier. Policing is a significant aspect of the political and legal system under China's authoritarian state, and the role of the police in China's governance has become more conspicuous in the past few years. But as the author points out correctly, policing in China is a neglected field of study inside and outside of China, and this timely book is likely to provoke debate and generate discussion in this field.
As the title of the book entails, this is an ambitious project in which the author attempts to search not only for the historical root of Chinese policing but also its modern manifestations. Given the ambition, the book is necessarily composed of chapters that touch upon wide-ranging issues, covering a great time span.
The first chapter deals with matters relating to methodology, especially the reliability of official data. The author firstly criticizes existing studies of Chinese policing and, for that matter, Chinese law, as ethnocentric and culturally ignorant. Following this strong criticism, unfortunately, the author cites principally Dutton's Policing and Punishment in China as the representative example to make his point (p. 6). This particular criticism is unduly harsh and unnecessary. In the first chapter, the author also makes important observations on the methodological difficulties in police research in China and suggests ways moving forward that are more methodologically sound. Ironically, the author does not use the methodology that he advocates so strongly in the subsequent chapters of the book.
The second chapter is a difficult read and the author seems to have travelled back and forth in history as if in a time machine. The central thesis is that Chinese policing was self-contained at the level of family and community, and the state played only a limited role in social control until the arrival of Western influence. This chapter has a valuable section of literature review on Chinese policing that has been little known, but the overall conceptual framework it provides is over-ambitious and lacks a clear structure. Also, it suffers from too much historical detail, the use of unrefined terms, and the inclusion of complicated charts that are difficult to read.
Chapters three and four study the origin and history of communist policing respectively. Chapter three is actually a nice case study of the 1925 Canton-Hong Kong strike in which the author discusses the dynamics between external government control and informal self-regulations within the strike communities and the process in which the two different mechanisms became mutually reinforcing. The theoretical framework of this chapter is clear, the data used to build the theory is solid and the analysis is nuanced, although the author could have teased out more clearly the relationship between the origin of Communist policing and the case study. Chapter five is a short chapter which identifies the revolutionary context in which the Communist police grew and developed.
The book moves to contemporary reform from chapter five, which focuses on police education, introducing the core features of police training in China. The chapter also gives a brief comparison of police education in China and the US. The most interesting part of this chapter is the discussion of the role of ethics in police education and the reasons why it remains a core component in China while it has faded away in the US.
Chapter six is entitled “Police culture” but is actually about China's political and legal culture in the broadest sense. It has nothing to do with police culture as the term is understood in the English literature. Chapter seven is a thorough review of police reform in China ranging from financing, operation and welfare. But it is based on an article that was originally published in 2002 discussing mainly police reform in the 1990s.
The final chapter is most provocative. It articulates a people-based and people-oriented policing theory, pointing out problems and difficulties of a social order in which personal problems have become excessively legalized, bureaucratized and professionalized. The points in support of community policing are well put. Following that framing, the author offers Maoist Mass Line theories and community policing practices as possible alternatives.
Overall, the book makes good reading for criminologists and people who are interested in China's legal development. The author makes a strong case in advocating more localized and nuanced policing studies and makes a valuable contribution in provoking debate about the future of community policing in China. This is an explorative book in which an author asks new questions instead of offering definitive answers.
My principal concern is with the value of informal justice and its relation to the rule of law. In advocating the importance of community policing, the author tends to underestimate the role of the state and its formal system in shaping and limiting the non-state sectors in policing. It can hardly be the case that in China “policing as a function starts with self and ends with the family/community” (p. 11), either in its history or contemporary practices.
In promoting community policing in China, the author exaggerates its potential, feasibility and legitimacy. A highly legalized society has its own problems, but the alternative based on community policing, without the rule of law, may create more danger than it is able to prevent. The Chinese Mass Line experience, as experienced in China, is a bad case to support community policing because of the excess of chaos and violence associated with it. It is unfortunate that the author has chosen Mass Line policing in the most radical, violent periods in China's recent history to provide justification, for while Mass Line policing has its strength which deserves support, the revolutionary violence perpetrated in its name should be avoided at all cost.
