Chinese Restorative Justice: Characteristics and Current Practices

Restorative justice has gained significant recognition worldwide in recent decades and has become a prominent concept for achieving fair and just outcomes within the criminal justice process. To explore the evolution of RJ in China, Wong and Mok (2013) conducted a content analysis of 252 Chinese academic journal articles published between 1 January 2006 and 31 December 2010 (hereafter called ‘the Previous Study’), and the findings were published in the Handbook of Asian Criminology. The review searched all scholarly printed journals by using the keyword ‘huifuxing sifa’ in the China Academic Journals Full-text Database of China. The study, which is the first of its type, provided readers with valuable insights into how RJ and related practices are conceived in China, and whether Western RJ models are welcome by Chinese academics and policy makers. To maintain update-to-date knowledge, Wong continued their review of Chinese literature on RJ (hereafter called ‘the Present Study’). Similar to the Previous Study, the Present Study reviewed all journal articles in the China Academic Journals Fulltext Database, but with both the keywords ‘huifuxing sifa’ (restorative justice) and ‘tiaojie’ (mediation) in the paper title and keywords. The period of research was from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2014. In total, 588 articles were identified for review. Through the content analysis of journal articles on restorative justice and mediation, this paper finds that most of the authors focused on analysing how RJ could be used at different levels of the CJ system. The finding reconfirms the common assertion that participants in Chinese mediation are normally encouraged to be resolve conflicts through moral persuasion. Furthermore, the Chinese method of performing RJ assists contemporary Chinese people to rejuvenate themselves in a way that can help citizen to retrieve the altruistic virtue, a sense of mutual caring, and an additive empathy or a healing heart for resolving disputes and forgiveness after settlement. In sum, the characteristics of Chinese restorative practices and challenges facing its development in China will be discussed.