Crime and Punishment in Ancient China and Its Relevance Today

The legal system of a nation and its response to crime reflect the economic, political, and cultural conditions prevailing at the time, as well as popular values and customs. In the case of China, the oldest continuous civilization in the world, the criminal justice system contains ancient traditions that are still influential. The cosmological tradition, which has the longest history, treated nature as the victim when human actions violated social norms. Thus, harsh punishments were imposed that rigidly mimicked violent aspects of nature: if the victim died, even by accident, someone must die to balance the harm caused to nature. The Confucian tradition developed a competing natural philosophy that tempered punishment by restoring social and natural order through moral education about proper behavior. Confucianism was designed to maintain civility in the absence of central authority by persuading leaders to create a harmonious society based on the limited use of raw power and punishment. Finally, the Legalist tradition restored harsh punishment as a way to impose order upon a fragmented society in which local despots had been carrying out arbitrary judgments. But Legalism carried the seeds of its own destruction and required Confucianism to balance it in creating a durable system of governance and justice. Each tradition developed as a way of solving a specific set of social and political problems, and each persisted as a partial solution to perennial questions about how to deal with social disorder. Even though criminal justice in China was Westernized after 1911, the older traditions still have an influence. Socialism has modified traditions of crime and punishment to some extent, but the overriding concern for social order and the ability of the state to guide society has not diminished.