Reassessing Penal Severity, Capital Punishment and White-Collar Crime in China

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

In the late 1970s China simultaneously embarked on twin projects of economic liberalization and criminal justice legal reform. In the decades since then China has employed harsh criminal sanctions including the death penalty to address growing concerns about corruption and economic crime. The papers in this panel draw on history, comparative international examples, popular opinion and Chinese jurisprudence to reassess the relationship between penal severity, capital punishment and white-collar crime in contemporary China.

Sub Unit

• Area VI. Comparative and Historical Perspectives / 50. International and Cross-National Comparisons

Individual Presentations

• Extended Reprieve: The Unabridged History of Suspended Execution in China - Tobias Smith, University of California, Berkeley

• Class Conflict and the Death Penalty in China - Puma Shen, University of California, Irvine

• Illegal Fundraising and China's Criminal Law - Yuan Qiao, Peking University Law School

Discussant

• Franklin Zimring, University of California, Berkeley