Progress and Future Directions of Crime Research in China with Selected Case Studies

Background

Since the beginning of market reforms in 1978, China has transformed from a centrally planned to a market-based economy, experiencing rapid economic and social development. Economic achievements have undoubtedly improved Chinese quality of life. At the same time, they have been accompanied by increased social inequality and injustice that potentially threatens prosperity and stability in China. Consequently, maintaining social stability through a combination of informal and formal control functions has surfaced as a top priority in the government’s agenda. This special issue aims to provide a better understanding of key criminological concerns under this Chinese context.

Under the umbrella of criminological research, we were particularly interested in studies concerning social justice, crime prevention, and policy implications. We were fortunate to compile four articles that examine these topics. Each is guided by Western theories with reflections on the importance of Chinese cultural and social traditions in shaping crime prevention and control. While reading through these articles, readers are reminded about the traditional control mechanism in China, starting with self (修身, xiū shēn) and moving to the family (齊家, qí jiā), the state (治國, zhì guó), and the world (平天下, píng tiān xià). Such a systemic model, including its emphases and sequence, should be evaluated in criminological research and be given more attention in policymaking.

Articles in the Issue

The most important social control apparatus in China is arguably the police. People’s views of police legitimacy and willingness to cooperate with the police are the focal concern of the first article by Sun and colleagues. Although Tyler’s procedural justice model has been widely tested in Western democracies, it has surprisingly never been adequately analyzed in China. Findings reported by Sun and colleagues are largely in line with Western evidence, showing that procedurally fair policing promotes favorable views of legitimacy, which in turn enhance Chinese willingness to cooperate with the police. But distributive fairness exerts a stronger impact on perceived legitimacy than procedural justice, a finding that departs from Western evidence. Results offer implications for policing measures and practice. Fairness and respect are fundamental to the police–citizen encounters not only in the Western societies but also in China.

Two articles focus on a highly socially disadvantaged group in China—migrant workers. Zhong and coauthors assess the vulnerability of rural-to-urban migrants through the concept of social exclusion to understand the relationship between internal migration and victimization in China. This article extends victimization research by confirming the mediating roles of social exclusion in “access to decent employment,” “a supportive social network,” and “safe communities.”

Chen and fellow researchers direct their attention to migrant workers’ family members by examining the victimization of school children left behind in rural China. One of their key findings indicates that, compared with children living with both parents in rural China, left-behind children experienced an elevated level of delinquency and victimization. Building on routine activity theory’s key concept of a “capable guardian,” their findings highlight the high-risk status of ill-cared rural youth and echo the indispensable role of Chinese fathers in crime prevention. The negative influence of the absence of father is critical to children’s well-being in rural China.

The final article centers on the neighborhood level of social support and crime control. Messner and colleagues assess the impacts of three distinctive neighborhood-based crime control activities in contemporary urban China: Tiao-jie, Bang-jiao, and neighborhood watch. All three programs were found to reduce reported household property crime. Community crime control with an emphasis on Confucian philosophy of conflict resolution and moral education appears to work well in the Chinese context. Further, this article expands the concept of “collective efficacy” by adopting a new operationalization of “social cohesion” that is different from definitions used in Western research. The Chinese-oriented concept is found to be related to the level of crime control activities.

Progress, Challenge, and Opportunity

The four articles presented here demonstrate criminological research in China is progressing and becoming more sophisticated. Nonetheless, crime and justice research in China remains underdeveloped by Western standards. Most research published in Western journals is produced by scholars not based in China. Publications on crime research within China have been rather limited until recently. For example, a search of publications written in Chinese (using the key words of crime geography, environmental criminology, crime prevention, defensible space, police geographic information systems (GIS), crime mapping, and crime hot spot) generated only 123 papers prior to 2010. These papers were largely contributed by scholars in the fields of law and geography, with a focus on Western theories and practice, risk factors, crime prevention strategies, and defensible space. An overwhelming majority of the work was based on qualitative analysis and personal views of the authors. Empirical studies with scientific rigor were hard to find in the Chinese journals prior to 2010.

Perhaps the status quo can be understood by considering two obstacles. First is the lack of independent criminology departments in China. Programs related to criminology are typically housed in law. Due to the lack of sufficient training in scientific methodologies in law programs, research by scholars from such backgrounds is rather limited. The relative scarcity of publications in Western journals by scholars in China underscores the importance of this limitation.

Second is the difficulty in accessing crime-related data. Crime data are highly confidential in China. Few in the research community have had access to official crime data, and publication based on these data is even more difficult. Foreign-based scholars typically rely on interview and survey data, the approach used by authors of the four papers in this special issue.

A nationwide project started in 2008 provided an opportunity for over 100 major cities to develop geographic information systems for policing (PGIS). This project integrates official crime data with data on the built environment and socioeconomic conditions. With PGIS, it is possible to summarize crime data by administrative and census units, such as city district, police district, Jiedao (residential district), and Juweihui (residential neighborhood). Many recent publications in Chinese are based on such units of analysis. We have seen a shift from research that uses survey/interview data to studies based on official crime data since 2010. Accurate geocoding of individual crime incidents remains difficult in China, due to the complexity of the street numbering system, especially in the old neighborhoods of Chinese cities. As a result, the size of the unit of analysis is often larger than 100 m².

In addition to PGIS, other recent initiatives including smart city, big data, and cloud computing have contributed to empirical research on crime. While the concept of smart city was initially proposed by IBM, it flourished in China. In 2012, the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development selected 90 cities or districts as pilot sites for smart cities. The Ministry of Science and Technology, together with the National Standardization Management Committee, selected 20 cities as the pilot sites of technology and standardization for smart cities in 2013. In 2014, nine ministries jointly issue guidelines for the development of smart cities.

Multibillions of dollars have been invested in this development. Two key components of smart cities are big data and cloud computing. Since 2015, the Ministry of State Security started initiatives to utilize big data and cloud computing for smart policing and fighting against terrorists. Such priorities from the central bureau have increased incentives for local police departments to seek help from outside researchers. The immediate outcome is that a number of research teams in China now have access to official crime data sets, after signing a confidential agreement. Some police department would even allow for publication of crime data in formats that ensure sufficient confidentiality. For example, spatial distribution is typically represented as density maps, labels of places are removed, and sometimes administrative boundaries are removed as well.

The developments above have directly contributed to the recent increase in empirical crime research. Results have been published in leading Chinese journals. A small number of papers have begun to appear in Western journals. This trend is expected to continue, with an increasing rate of growth in the near future.

Recent research by Professor Lin Liu’s group at the Sun Yat-sen University in collaboration with University of Cincinnati examined perceptions of safety of African migrants in Guangzhou, and spatiotemporal distribution of various types of crime, such as fraud, burglary, and robbery. In some of the studies, mobile phone data and taxi ridership are used to assess the change of ambient population during the day. Many of these papers are soon to appear in leading Chinese journals in geography.

Future Direction

With respect to the future development of crime research in China, we expect continued growth in certain areas. First, continued efforts to test the applicability of Western-based criminological theories are likely to make further contributions to crime research in China. Second, larger and more diverse study samples should be produced to better address policy and practice variations across jurisdictions in China. Third, preliminary plans for longitudinal research would overcome some of the limitations in cross-sectional research. Fourth, more empirical research based on official crime data is expected. Fifth, the spatial and temporal resolution of units is likely to become more fine grained. Finally, the availability of real-time big data, such as cell phone data, GPS tracking data, and Internet monitoring data, will facilitate the prediction of future crime.

The number of people in crime research has expanded significantly over the past six years as evidenced by the increased number of publications in leading journals and the increased number of grants awarded at the local and national level. The annual conference on crime geography and crime analysis at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou has provided a platform for researchers and practitioners to present their latest findings and exchange ideas. Information about the conference is available at http://cigna.sysu.edu.cn/. A recently established WeChat group has made instantaneous communication possible. We take this opportunity to call for greater participation in crime research in China, and we feel the time for takeoff is rapidly approaching.

Postscript by Mike Maxfield

This special issue on crime research in China is rooted in a 2014 publication in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (JRCD) by Zhang, Zhao, Zhao, and Ren (2014). The subtitle is noteworthy, as Zhang and colleagues describe how particular features of Chinese society differ from those that have driven research in Western countries. The roles of police and informal social control are markedly different, both adding to and noting limits of traditional theories.

Many papers describing research in China and other Eastern countries have been submitted to JRCD over the years. But few describe how research in other cultures adds to the general body of knowledge about crime and criminal justice. Guest editors for this special issue have pulled together four papers that do just that.

I am fortunate to have known Professor Jessica Li and her work for many years. Drawing on environmental criminology, she has examined a variety of problems in crime and deviance in Hong Kong and other locations. What results is truly international criminology that applies general crime prevention principles to problems that don’t exist (or are unknown) in the United States, such as compensated dating.

Similarly, Professor Lin Liu, a geographer, studies crime and place in the United States and China, another highly portable theoretical framework. Land use and the nature of public space in China differ from what’s found in other industrialized countries, but the important role of place is immutable. This theme underlies the annual conference on “Crime Geography and Crime Analysis” organized by Professor Liu at Sun Yat-sen University. It was hoped that several papers presented at the 2015 conference would be part of this special issue, but a mix of obstacles precluded that. Researchers in China continue to do fascinating research that will be of interest to scholars internationally, and I hope to see their work published in JRCD and other first-rate English-language journals.

I conclude with thanks to Professors Liu and Li for their hard work in pulling these papers together and commenting on other papers that did not become a part of this special issue. I was privileged to attend the 2015 conference in Guangzhou where, among other memorable parts of the journey, I witnessed the evening group exercises and Taiji practice that Hongwei Zhang and colleagues describe as a unique form of informal social control in China.