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3 - Performing Terror

Lenience, Legality, and the Dramaturgy of the Consolidating State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2019

Julia C. Strauss
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
State Formation in China and Taiwan
Bureaucracy, Campaign, and Performance
, pp. 120 - 167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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  • Performing Terror
  • Julia C. Strauss, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • Book: State Formation in China and Taiwan
  • Online publication: 13 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569163.004
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  • Performing Terror
  • Julia C. Strauss, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • Book: State Formation in China and Taiwan
  • Online publication: 13 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569163.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Performing Terror
  • Julia C. Strauss, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • Book: State Formation in China and Taiwan
  • Online publication: 13 October 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108569163.004
Available formats
×