Daniel Leese & Puck Engman 
Victims, Perpetrators, and the Role of Law in Maoist China 
A Case-Study Approach

The relationship between politics and law in the early People’s

Republic of China was highly contentious. Periods of intentionally

excessive campaign justice intersected with attempts to carve out

professional standards of adjudication and to offer retroactive justice

for those deemed to have been unjustly persecuted. How were victims and

perpetrators defined and dealt with during different stages of the

Maoist era and beyond? How was law practiced, understood, and contested

in local contexts? This volume adopts a case study approach to shed

light on these complex questions. By way of a close reading of original

case files from the grassroots level, the contributors detail

procedures and question long-held assumptions, not least about the

Cultural Revolution as a period of “lawlessness.”

Table of Content

Introduction (Daniel Leese, Puck Engman)

Beyond ‘Destruction’ and ‘Lawlessness’: The Legal System during the Cultural Revolution (Xu Lizhi)

The Intelligence Sleeper Who Never Was: Han Fuying and Case 5004 (Michael Schoenhals)

Vetting the People’s Servant: On the Principles of Revolutionary Integrity (Puck Engman)

A Policeman, His Gun, and an Alleged Rape: Competing Appeals for Justice in Tianjin, 1966–1979 (Jeremy Brown)

A Different Category of Life: The Counterrevolutionary Case of a Rural Schoolteacher (Wang Haiguang)

From Denial to Apology: Narrative Strategies of a ‘Perpetrator’ after the Cultural Revolution (Zhang Man)

The Floating Fate of a Rebel Leader in Guangxi, 1966-1984 (Song Guoqing)

About the author

Daniel Leese, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.
Puck Engman, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.