ABSTRACT
In the wake of the 1989 Pro-Democracy Movement in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), thousands of people suspected of having taken part in the protests were arrested and sent away for ‘reeducation through labor’ (laodong jiaoyang or laojiao) or other police-controlled ‘administrative’ detention. The flexibility of laojiao and similar sanctions makes them especially appealing to the PRC leadership and public security organs because they are swift, handy instruments that police can readily use when faced with rising social unrest. For this reason, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has been loath to release its tight grasp on laojiao despite the opposition of Chinese law reformers and foreign human rights observers. Thus a stalemate over its future persists. This book analyses the influence of the Pro-Democracy Movement and its
suppression on the Party and its policies. Our chapter reviews the policies with respect to criminal justice and, specifically, the extent to which the power to imprison remains firmly within the grasp of the police, without significant prosecutorial or judicial involvement.We use the contrasting example of the Republic of China on Taiwan (Taiwan) to demonstrate an alternative path. When the June 4th massacre occurred, Taiwan was just beginning to reverse a long-standing policy of allowing untrammeled police-imposed administrative detention. Over the intervening twenty years, in this respect the gap between practices in Taiwan and the Mainland has widened dramatically. Yet we believe that the stark differences will gradually diminish as the Mainland re-evaluates its practices with respect to policeadministered sanctions. The current state of affairs, however, gives little concrete reason to hope for major reform in the near future. We begin with a brief description of administrative detention and related
sanctions in the Mainland and Taiwan as of 4 June 1989. Part II deals with post-4 June developments in the Mainland. Part III tells a drastically different story of Taiwan’s criminal justice revolution over the past twenty years, with a focus on the demise of ‘reformatory training’ (ganxun), the island’s counterpart to laojiao. In conclusion, we ask what we can learn from these divergent experiences and consider where post-2009 events may lead.
