Lennart Riedel

As long as I can remember, I have had a fascination for all things China (a fact attested by a box full of childhood drawings of the Great Wall, temples, and dragons, which is currently collecting dust at my parents' house). Already at age 11, I hatched the plan to go backpacking through the People's Republic as soon as I turned 18. That goal led me, during my final year of high school, to the Confucius Institute Heidelberg, where I enrolled in an intensive two-week Chinese course. While the course didn’t quite equip me with a language level high enough to roam through China's countryside, it made me fall in love with the language itself and also helped me discover the existence of a subject called "Sinology.” Three months later, I enrolled at the Institute for Chinese Studies at Heidelberg, and one year after that, I finally boarded a plane to Beijing to begin my exchange year at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

While my first year of undergraduate studies at Heidelberg was formative in deciding which field of Chinese Studies I would later specialize in - Chinese literature – it was my year in Beijing that set the direction for my research: there, I had taken on a translation job for the Press Bureau of the PRC, and after having invested hundreds of hours into the project, I learned that the final project had been blocked from going to print – a first-hand encounter with censorship that left a lasting impression. Since then, I have been investigating the Chinese censorship system, a pursuit that gradually led me to a second field of interest: Chinese law. Luckily, I got the opportunity to satisfy this newly found interest during my subsequent time reading for the MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, where I familiarized myself with China’s legal system and delved deeper into censorship studies.

After completing my degree, I returned to Heidelberg, where I now teach translation classes and seminars on topics from the broader field of "Law and Literature" in contemporary China.  Alongside my teaching, I am working on my doctoral dissertation, which examines contemporary Chinese literary censorship law and practice through the lens of Confucian concepts of harmony and dissonance. A second research project focuses on the role of literature in shaping a law-based society in post-1978 China.

Three assumptions underpin my research: First, following Burt, I understand censorship not as a simple process of “removal and replacement,” but as one of "dispersal and displacement" (a decentralized and collaborative practice), and, drawing on New Censorship Theory, I argue that censorship is not merely prohibitive but also - and far more intriguingly – productive. Second, I am guided by Cover’s insight that "no set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning.” Third, I hold that fiction creates alternative spaces for public political, moral, and legal discourse, which have the potential to shape public consciousness, inform legal interpretation, and influence political decision-making.

• Post-1978 literary and academic censorship in the PRC
• Political and erotic/pornographic fiction in contemporary China
• The ways censorship shapes literary production and reception
• Literature’s influence on Chinese legal culture and practice
• Legal narratology
• Contemporary Chinese legal philosophy
• Communist Party ideology on law and culture
• The right to sexual autonomy and the concept of consent in Chinese criminal law
• Contemporary Chinese epistemology

• “Aesopian Language with Chinese Characteristics: Subversive Literary Discourses in Contemporary China.” Panel “Spiel mit dem (Un-)Sagbaren – China (Playing with the (Un)sayable – China),” 13. Asientag: Macht, Medien und Menschenrechte (13th Asia Day: Power, Media, and Human Rights), Stiftung Asienhaus, Köln, July 5, 2025.
• “In Search of Fang Siqi’s Legal Paradise – Reforming PRC Law Through Literature.” Socio-Legal Studies Panel, Oxford Chinese Law Discussion Group Conference for Junior Researchers 2025, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, June 6-7, 2025.
• Panel Discussion “Chinesisches Theater für ein deutsches Publikum – oder: Wie man dramatisch übersetzt (Chinese Theatre for a German Audience – or: The Art of Dramatic Translation),” with Sara Landa and Yip Suk Man, Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, April 16, 2025.
• “In Search of Fang Siqi’s Legal Paradise – Reforming PRC Law Through Literature.” Panel “Lin Yihan’s Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise: Exploring the Multiverse of Trauma Literature,” Association for Asian Studies 2025 Annual Conference, Columbus, Ohio, March 13-16, 2025.
• "Law and Literature in Contemporary China." Workshop: The Appeal and Challenges of Interdisciplinarity 学科交叉的魅力与挑战, Koguan School of Law, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, October 10, 2024.
• "Chinese Studies in the New Era: From Guoxue to Philosophy and Social Sciences with Chinese Characteristics and the Rejection of 'Western' 'Forced Interpretation'," School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, October 9, 2024.
• "Law, Literature, and Popular Morality in Contemporary China: On Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads and Other Narratives of Justice  当代中国的法律、文学与民间正义感：从莫言的《天堂蒜薹之歌》谈起," School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, September 25, 2024.
• "China's Anti-Obscenity Legislation and the Gradual Unbanning of the Jin Ping Mei cihua 中国关于反淫秽的法律法规与《金瓶梅词话》的逐步解禁." ‘Cross-Disciplinary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Contemporary China:’ Young Literary Scholars Workshop ‘跨界视野与当代中国’青年文学工作坊,” School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, September 20, 2024.
• “Contemporary Literature Between Harmony and Dissonance - Reframing China’s Present with China’s Past.” Shanghai Jiao Tong University-Heidelberg University International Graduate Student Conference: Flows and Circulations – Agents, Narratives, Institutions: A Transcultural Perspective, Heidelberg University, November 16-17, 2023.
• “65 Years of ‘Red and Expert’. The Tug of War between Academic Freedom and Political Loyalty.” Finissage, Exhibition Red and Expert – Negotiating Academic Freedom in China, Heidelberg University, October 12, 2022.
• “Geisteswissenschaften mit chinesischen Eigenschaften. Das neue Wissenschaftskonzept der Volksrepublik China und seine rechtlichen Grauzonen (Humanities with Chinese Characteristics. The People’s Republic of China’s New Academic Paradigm and Its Legal Grey Areas),” Confucius Institute Hamburg, August 24, 2022.