Introduction: Advancing Empirical Research on China’s Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice: Continuity and Expansion

Abstract

Educating the young is a permanent mandate for any civilization. Chinese society has accumulated both high expectations and high anxieties in developing its youth throughout the millennia. This has been a lasting theme manifested in Confucian thoughts on cultivating correct behaviors from a young age (Cao & Cullen, 2001) as well as in legal codes governing youth misbehavior in Chinese dynasties (Zhao, 2014). In the modern era under both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China, the basic concepts and practices of a Chinese juvenile justice system continued to evolve with mixed Western and traditional Chinese influences. The result is a fluid field of juvenile justice practices that will continue to challenge researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future. This introductory essay begins with a scan of the existing research literature on the subject, followed by a succinct summary of each study included in this special issue. We hope this special issue would demonstrate both the necessity of and a vision for advancing empirical research on China’s juvenile delinquency and justice responses.

Where Are We on Chinese Juvenile Justice Practices and Research?

For much of the time prior to the 1980s, Chinese youthful offenders were handled either by grassroots organizations such as neighborhood committees or by the police using administrative rules with no judicial oversight (L. Zhang, 2008). The establishment of Changning juvenile court in Shanghai in 1984 marked a symbolic first step toward building a legalistic juvenile justice system nationwide in mainland China. Since then, China has made great strides in the treatment of juvenile offenders under the fundamental principle of “giving priority to education and supplementing it with punishment.” The more recent legislative initiatives included abolishment of capital punishment for juveniles, conditional nonprosecution, due process rights for juvenile suspects, and sealing of juvenile criminal records (for more details, see Zhang & He in this special issue).

Scholarship on Chinese juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice has also proliferated in recent years. A literature search using the key words “juvenile delinquency” or “juvenile justice” from 1984 to the present in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)—the largest online database of Chinese language scientific publications in mainland China—yielded a record of 8,701 and 8,479 journal articles, respectively. This treasure-trove of burgeoning research literature chronicles the changing characteristics of juvenile offending and victimization, illustrates the most significant legal provisions concerning delinquency prevention and protection of minors, and showcases new practices in juvenile courts and corrections.

In parallel with the efforts put forth by the indigenous Chinese scholars, the last three decades have witnessed a substantial growth in both the quantity and the quality in the literature published in English on China’s juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice. A search at ProQuest, Criminal Justice Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts for the time frame from 1984 to the present resulted in more than 70 journal articles on China’s juvenile delinquency and justice related issues (not including studies conducted in Hong Kong and Macau). Although this number is by no means exhaustive, it represents a marked growth compared with the counts reported 10 years ago by L. Zhang (2008). A thorough review of the research literature identified reveals three major observations.

First, this marked increase in research literature does not exist in a vacuum, but in a unique backdrop with an upsurge of academic interests from the West focusing on China in the last two decades. Rather than appearing sporadically, scholarships on Chinese Criminology and Criminal Justice have been brought to light in more systematic fashion. For example, five special issues have been published since 2004 (i.e., Broadhurst & Liu, 2004; He & Zhuo, 2016; Lee & Laidler, 2013; Martin & Manning, 2014; L. Zhang, Messner, & Liu, 2008). There are multiple themed monographs (e.g., Bakken, 2006; Diament, 2010; He, 2014; Lo, 2009; McConville, 2011; Muhlhahn, 2009; Trevaskes, 2007, 2010; Zhong, 2009). A steady growth of edited books is also found, especially in the last decade (e.g., Bakken, 2018; Cao, Sun, & Hebenton, 2013; Friday & Ren, 2006; Johnson & Zimring, 2009; Liang & Lu, 2015; Liu, Hebenton, & Barbelet, 2012; Liu, Zhang, & Messner, 2001; McConville & Pils, 2013). In addition, there is a proliferation of peer-reviewed articles in international journals based both in the region (e.g., the Asian Journal of Criminology and the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology) and in major English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States (e.g., British Journal of Criminology, Criminal Justice & Behavior, Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly, etc.). Judging by the particularity of the research inquiries, the productivity reflected in both the number and quality of publications, and the fast-improving depth in talented researchers with eclectic academic training backgrounds, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that a coherent Chinese criminology and criminal justice befitting a “league of its own” has been developed. Because juvenile delinquency has been one of the key focuses in the development of modern criminology, the burgeoning literature on China’s juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice is likely to accumulate to even larger volumes due to its theoretical and policy importance.

Second, the overwhelming majority of the recent scholarships have focused on testing the Western developed theories on the causes/correlates of juvenile offending in the Chinese contexts. Scholars argued that the traditional fabric of the Chinese society has been torn by the rapid socioeconomic transformations taking place in China since the early 1980s, producing a younger generation less constrained by the long-established and culturally expected conduct norms (Cao, 2007). The modernization-induced normlessness is likely to have a far-reaching, long-term impact on the levels and characteristics of juvenile offending in China.

The extant theory–testing literature well reflects the impact of these recent social changes on juvenile delinquency in China (Weng, Ran, & Chui, 2016). This is evident in the frequent applications of a variety of micro-level classic theories such as the general theory of crime (e.g., Lu, Yu, Ren, & Marshall, 2013; Pyrooz & Decker, 2013; Ren, He, Zhao, & Zhang, 2017; Wang, Chen, Xiao, Ma, & Zhang, 2012), social control theory (e.g., Bao, Haas, & Xie, 2016; Ngai, Cheung, & Ngai, 2007; L. Zhang & Messner, 1996, 1999), general strain theory (e.g., Bao & Haas, 2009; Bao, Haas, Chen, & Pi, 2014; Bao, Haas, & Pi, 2007), and subculture perspective (e.g., H. Zhang, Zhao, Ren, & Zhao, 2017) in the unique Chinese settings. Diverse populations of juveniles (e.g., school students, migrant children, incarcerated teens, etc.) and various forms of delinquency and victimization have been examined in the literature. In addition to the encouraging progresses made in theories, outcome measures, and sample diversity, researchers have added greater sophistication to their research designs, including improved sampling (e.g., probability sampling) and the application of advanced statistical techniques (e.g., various regression analyses, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling, etc.). Although the results of these empirical studies should be treated with caution because the survey questionnaires were designed to measure theoretical constructs originally developed in the Western cultural context (Epstein, 2003), empirical research based on firsthand data collection has nonetheless brought a fresh perspective to Chinese academia and provided useful alternatives to the type of research solely based on highly aggregated official crime statistics (Shen & Hall, 2015).

Third, the involvement of Chinese domestic scholars in research design, data collection, and scholarly writing has become increasingly visible in English language publications. Several reasons underlie this newer development. In recent years, a growing number of well-trained Chinese scholars have chosen to return to their home country after earning their PhD degrees in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the U.S., U.K., and Canadian universities. These intrepid scholars are changing the way on how criminal justice research is perceived and conducted in China. They are leaders among domestic colleagues in publishing their works in journals included in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) database. In the meantime, the almost unsurmountable barrier facing non-Chinese scholars previously in collecting original scientific data in China is changing. As part of a collaborative international team of researchers, non-Chinese scholars now have better accesses to more research sites (e.g., schools and juvenile reformatories, etc.) in mainland China. It is worth mentioning that the local Chinese scholars are often incentivized by their home institutions to increase research productivity, including but not limited to joint international projects and greater number of peer-reviewed articles published in the SSCI journals.

The Contributions of This Special Issue

Built on the existing literature on China’s juvenile delinquency, this special issue aims at advancing our knowledge through both continuity and expansion. “Continuity” refers to our efforts to continue the line of empirical research on the causes/correlates of delinquency and victimization among Chinese adolescents. “Expansion” is twofold, emphasizing the urgent need for empirical research designed with cultural context-sensitivity in mind (e.g., feature variables that resonate with Chinese cultural values) and advocating for change to conduct studies using “criminal justice theory.” Criminal justice theory is defined by Duffee and Allan (2007) as follows:

explanations of the variations in responses to crime . . . Criminal justice theory seeks to explain and examine variations in, and the causes of, aspects of government social control systems, which select the criminal sanction over other forms of social control and shape the nature of the criminal sanction to be employed. (pp. 20-21)

Simply put, instead of focusing on crime/delinquency as a dependent variable that is often seen in the existing literature on China’s juvenile delinquency, criminal justice theory exclusively focuses on the criminal justice agencies’ responses to crime as dependent variables. In the subject area of China’s juvenile justice practices, scientific evaluations of the effectiveness of various innovative programs using criminal justice theory are extremely lacking. Although recent years have witnessed the advent of such studies of criminal justice practices in China (e.g., He, 2014; Shen, 2016), they have appeared to be “a sunflower in the desert” in quantity and have paled in comparison with the frequencies and rigor seen in similar research conducted in the West.

Another feature of this special issue concerns the collaboration between the domestic Chinese scholars and their non-Chinese counterparts. As demonstrated in the number of publications via the CNKI database reported earlier in this essay, it is fair to say that decades of accumulated scholarship in Chinese do exist but they have not been easily accessible to the non-Chinese colleagues. Cross-fertilization of the two streams of scholarship is much needed for the researchers to take full advantages of the contextual, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological understandings of the challenges facing Chinese juvenile justice. This special issue attempts to be a conduit for the dialogue between the two research communities.

More specifically, this special issue consists of four empirical studies and one bridging essay examining topics surrounding China’s juvenile delinquency and justice system. Drawing upon the general strain theory, Li and Xia investigated how discrimination is related to delinquency among a sample of 1,300 children of migrant workers, as a large portion of crimes in Chinese cities were committed by migrant children who were no strangers to discrimination. Taking a step further than simply demonstrating a direct and significant association between discrimination and delinquency, Li and Xia used structural equation modeling to explore the mediating effects from social support, negative emotions, and social bonds on the relationship between discrimination and delinquency among migrant children. The authors found that perceived discrimination reported by the students was positively related to delinquency through all three mediating mechanisms.

The second article included in this special issue uses another classic criminological theory—the general theory of crime. Although low self-control (LSC) has proven to be a significant predictor of juvenile delinquency in many settings, Weng and Chui assessed the comparative predictive efficiency of two sets of self-control measures—namely, the Grasmick et al.’s (1993) LSC measures and Hirschi’s (2004) reconceptualized “bonding self-control” measures, on theft and violent crime among the Chinese male adolescents. Data for this study were obtained from 784 incarcerated teens in two reformatories and 1,264 students from two secondary schools. Findings from the study suggest that Grasmick et al.’s attitudinal scale has more explanatory power than that of Hirschi’s revised measure in predicting Chinese juvenile delinquency.

Rather than focusing on the predictive power of LSC on juvenile delinquency, the third article written by Ren, Zhao, and Luo centered on the factorial structure of Grasmick et al.’s (1993) LSC measures across three distinct samples of high-school students, youth held in jail, and youth serving time in juvenile prison in a province located in Southwestern China. A strong rationale behind this study is that the LSC factorial structure is often taken for granted as having been established in prior studies. Yet, none of the published Chinese studies have ever examined the extent to which the conventional LSC measure is both conceptually and operationally sound in the Chinese cultural setting. Results from this study provide strong support for second-order or hierarchical model of LSC across the three sample groups.

In the fourth article of this special issue, Zhao’s study shed light on the impact of school contexts (e.g., school type, level of bonding to school, school disorder) on violent and property victimizations among a sample of 3,628 high-school students in a southern city of China. Unlike in the United States where research on crime victimization has blossomed during the past decade (Zhuo, Messner, & Zhang, 2008), victimization studies in China are at an infant stage of development (Ren et al., 2017). Zhao’s study adds important insights to this underdeveloped yet important area. Results based on Zhao’s current study lend support to the lifestyle/routine activity theories. Finally, Zhang and He’s essay provided a timely overview of the Chinese juvenile justice national data, offering an in-depth discussion on the principles and mixed influences of Chinese juvenile justice process, and highlighted the most significant challenges facing the Chinese juvenile justice system today.

Conclusion

The exemplary works included in this special issue offer the latest examples of scholarly efforts in advancing the empirical explorations of the causes/correlates of juvenile delinquency in the Chinese sociocultural contexts. Both the Western and domestically trained criminologists with an interest in studying crime and justice issues in China should be encouraged that the acceptance of empirical methods and a philosophy favoring evidence-based policy making and theory-based evaluations are gradually gaining a foothold in the local research community. There should be no doubt that both the quality and quantity of criminal justice research conducted in China need continuous improvements. More importantly, Chinese criminology specialists should give priority to developing indigenous criminological and criminal justice theories in addition to continued adaptation and testing of Western-based theories. Evaluative studies of the Chinese juvenile justice practices are a worthy venue to pursue given the urgency of the issues surrounding juvenile crimes and the importance of assessing the effectiveness and ramifications of juvenile laws and associated government policies adopted in recent years.

Ling Ren, PhDSam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA Hongwei Zhang, PhDJinan University, Zhuhai, China

Footnotes

Author Biographies

Ling Ren is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. Her research interests include policing, cross-national research on crime and delinquency, and application of quantitative methodology. She has published nearly 40 peer-reviewed journal articles; her recent work has appeared in journals such as Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, and Journal of Criminal Justice. She earned her PhD from the University of Nebraska Omaha in 2006.

Hongwei Zhang is a professor in the School of Humanities and Juvenile & Family Law Research Center at Jinan University, China. His research concentrates on juvenile delinquency and justice, domestic violence, and criminal law. He earned his PhD from Sam Houston State University in 2004.

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