Book contents
- State Formation in China and Taiwan
- State Formation in China and Taiwan
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Virtue and Talent in Making Chinese States
- 2 Comparative Terror in Regime Consolidation
- 3 Performing Terror
- 4 Repertoires of Land Reform Campaigns in Sunan and Taiwan, 1950–1954
- 5 Theaters of Land Reform
- Conclusion
- Book part
- Documentary Collections, Reports, and Periodicals
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Performing Terror
Lenience, Legality, and the Dramaturgy of the Consolidating State
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2019
- State Formation in China and Taiwan
- State Formation in China and Taiwan
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Virtue and Talent in Making Chinese States
- 2 Comparative Terror in Regime Consolidation
- 3 Performing Terror
- 4 Repertoires of Land Reform Campaigns in Sunan and Taiwan, 1950–1954
- 5 Theaters of Land Reform
- Conclusion
- Book part
- Documentary Collections, Reports, and Periodicals
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
While both the PRC in Sunan and the ROC in Taiwan had judicial systems that presumed the guilt of the accused and offered lenience to those who came forward and confessed, both were in practice arbitrary. In Sunan promises of lenience for those who registered were abruptly cancelled with the “high tide” of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, and in Taiwan the extension of lenience was notoriously inconsistent. The ways in which the state in Sunan and Taiwan implemented campaigns against subversion were, however, very different. In Sunan, the accused were paraded in front of a large audience in public accusation sessions and directly confronted by their victims’ tales of sorrow, whipping up the crowd into enthusiasm for the state’s just retribution; in Taiwan the accused were spirited away by shadowy security organizations, held incognito in prisons, and sentenced according to (martial) “law” in performances of procedure put on by the state for itself.
Keywords
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- State Formation in China and TaiwanBureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance, pp. 120 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019