The Compelling Ideal is a thoughtful, rigorously researched, and meticulously detailed investigation into early twentieth-century Chinese penal reform, from the last decade of the Qing dynasty to the formative years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Throughout this study, Jan Kiely uses the concept of ganhua—which he defines as “a system of discipline through institutional incarceration and instruction aimed at transforming the mind and character” (p. 7)—to demonstrate how the ideal of modern, rehabilitative incarceration was used to buttress state power across multiple successive regimes. A central contention of this book is that the roots of Maoist thought reform can be traced back to late Qing- and early Republican-era efforts to morally rehabilitate the convict within the setting of the prison. Through rich detail and copious examples, Kiely convincingly demonstrates that Chinese thought reform is neither essentially Maoist nor typically Communist, but rather grew out of earlier carceral practices that aimed to achieve the moral transformation of the individual.

The book proceeds chronologically, with the first half roughly centering on the years between 1900 and 1927. Kiely begins by introducing the Japanese penologist Ogawa Shigejiro, who catalyzed Chinese penal reform in the first decade of the twentieth century. Inspired by contemporary Western theories, Ogawa contended that crime was a product of societal deficiencies, and that the only way to achieve the reformation (ganhua) of the convict was through an emphasis on work training and general education. In spite of Ogawa's early influence, Kiely persuasively argues that late Qing officials nevertheless continued to interpret ganhua through a more traditional, Confucian lens. Reformers such as the Qing official Shen Jiaben emphasized moral reform over strictly knowledge-based education, and stressed that the ultimate goal of rehabilitation should be to achieve an authentic emotional conversion within the mind and heart of the convict. Prison instructors throughout the late Qing and early Republic thus imparted moral messages to the prison population through didactic songs, instructive wall posters, and even “prisoner repentance talks,” where convicts had the opportunity to discuss their previous moral failings and their sincere desire to be rehabilitated. Relating these activities to later Communist efforts at thought reform, Kiely shows how such tactics were used to “inspire a profound emotional stimulus meant to initiate the transformation of the mind” (p. 73).

The second half of the book turns its attention to the penal reform efforts undertaken by the Nationalist (Guomindang or GMD) government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) before, during, and after the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45). Although the GMD emphasized labor as a way to both transform the prisoner and economically support the prison and nation, Nationalist reformatories continued to prioritize the moralizing impulse that had been introduced by previous penal reformers. Nevertheless, in a trend that would continue through the establishment of the PRC in 1949, prison education under the GMD increasingly came to adopt a language of “partification”—particularly as a growing number of convicts were incarcerated on account of their misplaced political loyalties and “counterrevolutionary” sentiments.

Concluding with a chapter on revolutionary thought reform under the CCP, Kiely demonstrates how CCP penal projects both built upon and diverged from earlier reformist efforts. Although the CCP also prioritized the moral transformation of the prisoner, CCP thought reform was expressed in a revolutionary vocabulary that was unarguably unlike that of its GMD and Qing predecessors. Using struggle sessions to psychologically (and sometimes physically) undermine counterrevolutionary elements, thought reform under the CCP appealed less to the “moral authenticity” of convicts than to their knowledge that survival meant submission to the regime.

Kiely is not the first to study penal reform in early twentieth-century China. Most notably, Frank Dikötter's Crime, Punishment, and the Prison in Modern China focuses on many of the same individuals discussed in Kiely's monograph, and similarly underscores how ganhua “was the core value of penal philosophy in modern China.”Footnote ⁷ There are, nevertheless, key differences between the two studies. While Dikötter attempts to tie Chinese penal reform to global trends, Kiely's study is less concerned with the assimilation and appropriation of foreign penological theory than with the persistence—in different guises—of a Confucian discourse of moral cultivation and reformative potential. This focus perhaps causes Kiely to downplay the extent to which foreign theories influenced the construction of new penal systems and judicial codes in China. For instance, although Kiely mentions in passing that Communist labor reformatories “overtly emulat[ed] the Soviet Union's labor-reform system,” he does not directly discuss the extent or content of that emulation; instead, he interprets the continued emphasis on reform through labor less as Communist “exceptionalism” than as an extension of earlier Chinese penal practices (p. 245). While this conclusion is debatable, there are still advantages to Kiely's China-centric approach. In particular, rooting CCP practices in earlier domestic precedents allows Kiely to draw attention to consistencies in Chinese penal practices before and after the 1949 divide—a premise that Dikötter explicitly refutes in his own research, where he instead claims that “the prison system of the republican period came to an abrupt end in 1949.”Footnote ⁸

Overall, The Compelling Ideal is extraordinarily thorough in its research, drawing from provincial- and national-level archival materials, memoirs, and other unique sources such as diaries, letters, and confession statements. Even with the meticulous attention to detail, Kiely never loses sight of his broader objective to tie Communist thought reform to its earlier precedents in Qing- and Republican-era penal practices. This effort goes a long way to demystifying the apparent uniqueness of the CCP's approach to large-scale social reform in the 1950s.