ABSTRACT
To tell the story of the Chinese prison system, one must constantly read between the lines. As these two quotations demonstrate, these lines are, all too often, battle lines drawn between scholars repre senting very different social and value systems. The ferocity of lan guage deployed highlights the extent of difference between these two accounts, but consequently blinds us to what are more deeply shared assumptions about the system and its role. Thus, despite their almost diametric opposition to each other's readings, these two accounts both predicate their own prison stories upon a shared set of assumptions about, and shared readings of, the Chinese penal system.
