Jenny Huangfu Day’s book opens with the 1899 criminal case of a local ringleader in Hong Kong. The British colonial government refused the Qing government’s request to extradite him, invoking the “political offense exception” because of his association with Sun Yat-sen. This case introduces the broader questions at the heart of the book: how governments – especially the colonial administrations of Hong Kong and Macau – interacted with the Qing and later Beiyang governments; how international treaties and laws were applied when they conflicted with local legislation or diverged over time; and how “political crime” was defined and used. Through dozens of criminal cases, the book offers a vivid and often suspenseful legal history of British–Chinese relations. In the absence of formal extradition treaties, legal disputes centred on whether Qing punishments were acceptable to the British legal discourse and on what counted as a “political crime.” In the tradition of Foucault, Day closely examines this concept and persuasively argues that it was deeply political: “the refusal or granting of the extradition request for political offenders was a matter of political interests, the outcomes of which often depended on the similarity of the political systems between the requesting and the requested state” (p. 9).
Fugitives from Qing China frequently fled to Hong Kong or boarded British ships in the treaty ports to escape the Qing legal system. This forced the Hong Kong government to process their cases under international treaties. Day carefully traces how the legal foundations of extradition evolved over time. She focuses on the period when “extraterritoriality and colonialism interfered with the jurisdiction of political crimes in China most intensely” (p. 27), beginning in the mid-1860s and ending in the early 1930s, by which time the mixed courts had been abolished and the semicolonial spaces that fugitives had used to their advantage had been significantly narrowed.
Drawing on a wide range of legal and historical materials, Day tells the story of extradition chronologically. Chapter two examines the case of Mo Wang, a Taiping leader who sought refuge in Hong Kong, was handed over to Qing authorities and then brutally executed. Day shows how the outrage this provoked in Hong Kong and Britain helped build momentum for reforming extradition laws that were still based on unequal treaties. Chapter three analyses the new extradition treaties of the 1870s, which reflected shifts in legal thinking within the British Empire. Chapters four and five move into the 1880s and explore how the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars reshaped jurisdictional politics. Chapter five foregrounds Sun Yat-sen: after leading an uprising in Canton, he escaped to Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and then England, repeatedly facing the threat of extradition to China. His personal, spiritual and political transformation attracted sympathy for him as a “political offender.” The chapter traces contemporary media debates over his abduction by Qing agents in London – widely condemned as an act of “oriental despotism” (p. 115) – and highlights the role of individual politicians, such as Hong Kong governor Henry Blake, in shaping the status of political offenders more broadly.
Chapter six continues to follow the political offence exception into the early 1900s, showing how revolutionaries actively used international law to secure protection. After the Hundred Days’ Reform, many reformers fled to Japan, which became an important destination for political fugitives escaping Qing persecution. Japanese legal institutions served as a reference point for Qing reformers, and the term kokujihan (political offender) entered Chinese legal discourse as guoshifan, ultimately facilitating judicial reform in China. Chapter seven explores how sovereignty was renegotiated in new laws and how Chinese jurisdiction was reasserted after the abolition of the mixed courts. Chapter eight concludes by arguing that extraterritoriality and colonial law had a profound impact on China’s political trajectory in the 20th century, particularly on the emergence of the idea of “rule of law.”
The book is rich in empirical historical detail and is, on the whole, well written, though its density and legal complexity can make it a demanding read. It stands out in two respects in particular. First, throughout the book Day offers a critical and nuanced understanding of “political crime,” both in its historical interpretation and in light of critical thinking. Second, she keeps the Chinese and British perspectives in productive balance. She makes a convincing case that colonialism and extraterritoriality deeply shaped Chinese debates on judicial sovereignty and that these debates, in turn, reflected China’s evolving position on the global stage. This book will be tremendously valuable for scholars of legal history, border studies and modern Chinese history. General readers without prior knowledge of late Qing and Republican China, however, may find it challenging, as it is not intended as an introduction to China’s modern history. It is a deeply researched and thoughtfully argued work that testifies to Day’s remarkable scholarly rigour and interpretive skill.
