Institut für Sinologie Reassessing Modern Chinese History through a County Prosecutor’s Archive

Procuracies range among the least-studied institutions of the early People’s Republic of China, frequently eclipsed by scholarship on public security organs and, more recently, on the courts. Their formal abolishment in 1968 has further obscured their particular roles in the tripartite “gong-jian-fa” structure. The 1954 constitution tasked local procuracies with ensuring observance of the law by local state organs and citizens. In theory, this included administrative oversight, sanctioning arrests, and occasional investigatory work. In practice, the undefined supervisory roles frequently put procuracies at odds with other state and party organs. Drawing on a set of around 400 original case files from a county-level procuracy in Anhui Province, this paper traces how the institution handled case work and navigated bureaucratic competition from 1955 to the early Cultural Revolution. The files offer rare insights into what constituted unlawful behavior, ranging from illicit gambling and purported witchcraft to corruption and the killing of commune livestock. Moreover, the study highlights the ever shifting boundaries of the procuracy’s authority and the precarious weight accorded to legal supervision in a period marked by political turmoil. Finally, the material remnants themselves mirror the tentative efforts to replace traditional forms of accusation or petitioning through standardized bureaucratic routines.

Daniel Leese studied history, Chinese studies and economics in Marburg, Beijing and Munich, and was awarded a PhD in 2007 from the International University Bremen with a thesis on the cult of Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution. He served as assistant professor at LMU Munich before taking up a professorship in Chinese studies at the University of Freiburg in 2012. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the ICAS Best Book Award 2021 and a nomination (shortlist) for the German Non-Fiction Prize 2021 for Mao’s Long Shadow: China’s Approach to the Past (Munich 2020). His research focuses on modern Chinese history and politics, and in particularthe history of the Chiense Communist Party, social and intellectual discourses, and the Chinese legal system. Currently he works on Chinese information infrastructures and the handling of historical injustices.