The Personal Safety Protection Order against Domestic Violence in China

Professor He, Xin   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Professor Palmer Michael   (Co-Investigator)

36

2021-01-01

2023-12-31

924000

The Personal Safety Protection Order against Domestic Violence in China

China, Domestic Violence, Protection Order

LawSociology

Humanities & Social Sciences (H)

17620820

General Research Fund (GRF)

2020

Completed

1. Unlike previous studies that have relied on doctrinal analysis, legal regulations, sporadic interviews, published judgments, media reports, and anecdotal accounts to study the Protection Order in China, this study employs a new method – directly examining the dynamics between the judges and the applicants and respondents. Through this methodology, our Project will examine both offenders’ and victims’ cultural norms toward domestic violence in marital or cohabitation relationships, and political and bureaucratic considerations regarding social stability and case backlogs, respectively. This will form the basis for understanding the developing norms on justice and the operational patterns of Chinese divorce law practice. 2. On the doctrinal and legislative levels, the Protection Order has been expected to reduce domestic violence in China. Our Project explores its limitations at the level of implementation. It will shed light on the hidden problems created by a system that values self-protection over rights and the delivery of justice. It thus raises important questions about China’s divorce law procedures. Additionally, our Project will provide policy recommendations for future reform. 3. By examining under what circumstances the application for the Protection Order is invoked and how it is negotiated in China, this Project will provide a story on the relationship between law, culture, politics, and justice in China’s context. Law has long been regarded as a cultural intervention to shape the self with masculinity and femininity (Merry 2001). How does this process unfold in China where the traditional culture is incongruent with the law? Exploring the forces underneath the interactions in the application of the Protection Order in China, our Project will enrich the literature on comparative studies of cultural and justice, which has drawn the most from the experience of societies and jurisdictions other than Mainland China. 4. The Protection Order is regarded as a typical tactic in spatial governmentality, striving to reduce the risk of violence via space separation. In the last decade or so, the site has changed from Women’s Federation Associations to the courts, and the strategies have changed from discipline to space. To what extent has the state switched to this spatial tactic, or still relied on corporal punishment or soul discipline? By examining empirical evidence of the evolution of the state’s strategies in China, our project will enrich the idea of governmentality (Foucault 1991), which has been developed primarily based on liberal democracies.