07/30/25 - Law Professor Lecture Edition!

An extremely long article transcribing a lecture by Zhao Hong, a researcher in Law at the Beijing University of Law: “The worst is those parents who have a criminal record. Why does kin punishment still exist?”

“Hello, everyone. I am Zhao Hong, a professor at law school.

I often talk about good and evil in my classes, but I almost never meet evil people in life. By coincidence, I came by an opportunity to come into touch with people who have broken the law for various reasons and heard their stories. I slowly began to break my assumptions about this group.

Due to their criminal background, they’ll become depressed, humiliated, even angry and hateful. Trapped by their identity as a “criminal”, what they face is inescapable systematic discrimination and psychological humiliation.

What I want to share with people today is the stories of these criminals. I want to talk about their red letter, and the continuous effort law workers have put towards removing these red letters.

The iceberg of criminals:

We need to go back in time by a couple of years. One day, I suddenly received a letter for advice from a young man. He said that when he was looking for work, he needed to go to the police station and get a “clean criminal history” proof.

The police station checked and found that he had been put in administrative hold for gambling a few years back. Although he had no criminal record, there’s still a record that he had broken the law. So the police station wrote about this incident in his “clean criminal history” letter.

You can all imagine, with a clean criminal history letter, of course he lost his job. He wanted to ask how he can get a clean proof of no criminal history from the police station, or whether there was any way to get that violation wiped off of his record.

Honestly, as a professor to lectures about law, I only learned a couple of years ago that even a very simple violation will still leave a permanent record. I looked through all the legal codes and couldn’t find anything that would let you demand the police station remove that record.

Not long after this incident, an editor at the Shanghai Law Journal invited me to write a commentary.

A father in Sha’anxi wanted to transfer schools for his 15-year-old child, but every school they asked, they were told the school was full and could not accept any more students. He was very confused and went to the Department of Education to ask and finally found out that the reason they were turned down by every school was because his child had a criminal history, because this child once sat in the passenger seat without his seat belt on, and broke the “Road Safety Law”.

This case is a perfect demonstration between “breaking the law” and “committing a crime”. Committing a crime is one of the most severe ways of breaking the law. It is defined by the Penal Code and has a very strict process ensuring that the conviction comes about in a fair away. But breaking the law is very common, and most acts of breaking the law doesn’t actually have any moral weight.

Almost everyone here today has ran a red light, or wasted food while eating at a restaurant, but according to the Road Safety Law or the Preventing Food Waste Law, all of that is breaking the law.

But an administrative penalty or a public safety violation will leave a permanent record just the same as committing a crime and will continue to affect your life.

I’ve researched a lot of legal codes, and I’ve looked up a lot of judgements on the Chinese Court Case Net. I found that public safety violations will not only affect you getting a government job, getting into school, enlisting, it’ll even make you unable to run for HOA leadership. Some people have even been hired as an expert and then removed the next day because they broke thee law.

Some military veterans already won plaques of honour from the government, but just because they got in a fight and got a violation record, the government came to remove the plaque in front of everyone’s eyes.

So I wrote in the article, “A record of administrative punishments is akin to modern day tattoo punishments. The records tattoo a mark into people’s foreheads and has made people bear a punishment much harsher than potential harm of their behaviour. It is a complete betrayal of the concept of “fair punishment” in modern law.”

The concept of “fair punishment” is the idea that the punishment should be equal to the crime and that you cannot use cruel and unusual punishment. I also wrote in my medal that if we are calling for crimes to not be labelled as “light crime” or “minor crime”, then public safety violations should also be wiped off the record when it fits certain criteria.

After this article was posted, there wasn’t much of a reaction from the legal community. Very few people reposted it. Because compared to my past commentary, this case didn’t seem very controversial and the case isn’t very complex.

But surprisingly, after that, I received a lot of letters from readers. Some readers say, “Professor Zhao, your article really moved me. Finally, an expert has noticed this demographic.”

One reader wrote down his story in detail. Ten years ago, he was fined 500RMB because of a public safety violation. After 10 years of hard work, he thought he had finally overcome its influence, but when it came to the party representative election, he was eliminated because of that record. He was veto’d out.

At the end of his letter, he wrote, “I really worked very hard. How can I earn the opportunity to make things right?”

Removing the prejudice from your hearts:

After that, I became something of a rubber duck. Letters from people with criminal histories came flooding in. They shared all their humiliation with me. When I’m sitting in front of the computer reading these people’s letters, I sometimes feel like a priest listening to people’s confessions. And as I read these letters, I finally started to see the world beneath the iceberg.

What left a really deep impression on me is a man completing his PhD degree. He secretly told me that he was once put in an administrative hold because he had solicited a sex worker. It wasn’t made public, probably because he was at a forgiving school. After he already received his public safety punishment, he did not get an academic punishment.

And yet, the Sword of Damocles that hung over his head did not disappear. The school never punished him, but there’s going to be a background check when he starts looking for work. He said that he keeps delaying graduation because he’s afraid that he’ll suffer social death once he starts looking for work, but this year was his final year. If he doesn’t graduate now, his whole life will become problematic. He self-deprecated that he must be the most embarrassed PhD student in China.

He said that after he was caught, he regretted it the very first day. He went through a lot of legal documents and found that in his current circumstances, it was impossible to find a government job or become a university professor or even join a normal research institute like he had dreamed about. So at this point, his mindset is that he doesn’t care if he breaks an already broken pot. But he’s still upset. He said, “Why can’t we give people who’ve made mistakes another chance? A single mistake can bury 20 years of hard work?”

When he wrote his letter, it was in 2023, right as the “Public Safety Penalty Law” was getting amended. I was calling at the time that public safety violation records should be sealed or wiped, and that should be written into law. After all, this problem affects a lot of people and almost nobody ever talks about it.

At the time, a reporter wanted to interview me. After getting this PhD student’s permission, I sent his email on to the reporter and asked the reporter to interview him instead.

After the interview was published, he emailed me back and said, “Last night was one of the happiest days of the last few years for me. This is the first time I’ve ver been interviews. I didn’t know anyone cared about a pathetic stranger like me. And I’m happy that I was able to participate and try to do something for all the people out there struggling the way I am.”

I think one of the reasons he felt happy is that for once, he could put down his feeling of shame. He felt like people could actually forgive him. If you think about it, in such a sexually repressed society, being labelled a “whoremonger” is enough to destroy a person.

A lot of people here knows someone who has taken drugs before or slept with sex workers before, and you look down upon those people, but what I want to say is that although these people may be lacking in personal morals and although they may have broken the law, the law has already punished them with an administrative hold. If we keep allowing them to be discriminated and shamed their whole life, are we not violating the “fair punishment” principle?

And from another angle, I’ve handled a lot of cases where people were charged with solicitation after agreeing to meet but never showing up, or just receiving borderline sexual services [like watching a strip show]. Breaking the law can be a very complex thing, but the punishments are all very blunt and straightforward. Is that reasonable?

I sent his email to the reporter again, and that female reporter later told me, “Professor Zhao, it used to be that I couldn’t stand people who would commit a moral sin like sleeping with a prostitute. I thought they deserved any punishment meted out to them. But after hearing this story, I really felt like it was too much to make anyone carry such a heavy burden.”

We’re always saying that the purpose of law is to remove prejudice, but prejudice is actually everywhere. Before we try to fix an unfair system, should we not try to overcome our own prejudices first?

For that purpose, I’m very thankful to the people writing letters to me. At least, it has let me walk out of the cocoon that was limiting my own understanding.

I often talk about Murakami Haruki’s novel After Dark. There’s a plot point in the novel, where a student in law school really liked to sit in on criminal court cases, and most of the people receiving judgement are absolute villains like murderers and arsonists.

At first, he thought that an unbreakable wall separated himself and these people, but the more he went, the more he discovered there might not be a wall between good and evil. Or at least, it’s not nearly so indestructible. A single moment of desire can cause you to be captured by evil, and someone could jump from one side to the other.

The reason I tell this story is because those who study law are more susceptible to thinking they are better than others. We always assume that the law teaches people how to identify good from evil, and those who studied law are naturally more moral and good than others.

But the reality is, whether you studied law or not, desire and temptation and human nature always exist. A single moment of boredom, impulse, or even exhaustion or neglect could be enough for you to break the law.

Once we understand this, we can put down the sense of moral high ground in our hearts and stop judging other people for their morals.

A part of the truth about rule of law:

Those who write to me often say, “Professor Zhao, I regret my actions, of course, but I also feel like I’m so unlucky.” On the one side, they do repent for their crimes. But on the other hand, they also feel like they really didn’t do anything wrong, they didn’t bring much harm to society, but they have been permanently marked by the law. They think they were just unlucky under a selectively enforced justice system.

I’m taking examples from a lot of letters here. For example, a guy told me that he got into a scuffle with the neighbouring table while eating out. Although nobody got injured, he was still held for 6 days for “deliberately disturbing the public peace” by the police.

While he was in jail, he remembered thinking to himself that at least it’s just an administrative hold. He was never convicted of anything. So he should treasure every day from now on, live his best life, work hard. He even swore that he would do more charity from now on to try to make up for his guilt at breaking the law.

But after he got out of jail, because he couldn’t get a clean criminal history proof, he had to quit his old job. Although he’s in a new office now, he still steps on eggs every day in case his past got dug up again.

There’s a military veteran who once got a Second Rank Honour before, who had donated during the Sichuan earthquake, who had donated blood multiple times. After he got discharged, his parents store got bullied by the local gang, and he beat the hoodlums up and was put in an administrative hold. And when he looked for work, he also couldn’t get a clean criminal history proof, and the police station told everyone in his hometown about his crimes and he felt very humiliated.

I often tell my students in class that they cannot graffiti any public space or they might get punished for “disturbing the public peace”. And this has actually happened before.

A man who was disabled in childhood wrote me and said that his neighbour was setting off fireworks in the middle of the night and he found it very loud, so he reported it to the police station and environmental protection agency, but nobody ever came by. So he spray-painted “DEATH” on his neighbour’s door to vent his anger, and he was put in a public safety hold for “disturbing the public peace”. A criminal record plus a disability makes his career prospects even worse.

Aside from impulsively breaking the law, a lot of people break the law because they didn’t notice.

A 2000’s kid said that he had a very smooth life from primary school to university, but his life took a twist in 2022. That year, it was the Katar World Cup. A lot of sports betting apps got launched on various social media platforms and websites. He thought that everything advertised in the ads were legal, so he picked an app and put in 500RMB, and that was the worst decision of his life.

A few months later, he was summoned by the police, and no matter how he tried to defend himself and claim that he’s also a victim, in the end, he was still held by the police for gambling. And a university student became a criminal with a bad history.

The saddest stories in these latter are those parents who have violated the law. A lot of places have policies that your criminal history doesn’t just affect you, it’ll also affect your children and family.

A father once was held for playing mahjong and betting money. His daughter successfully passed the exam to become a teacher, but was eliminated in the background check round. His daughter left home in a rage and the father’s hair went white out of self-blame and anxiety.

A mother was also punished for playing poker. Her child got into a top university and almost couldn’t pass the background check. It took them a lot of effort to get him through, but she’ll also never be forgiven by her child.

Someone who called themselves “A Regretful Father” said that he can reap what he sowed, but he can’t let his innocent children be affected like this. Living with such a label every day is worse than death.

When I read these letters, I often feel disoriented and disbelieving. It has been so long. Why does kin punishment still exist? Because it holds a lot of intimidation? Because it’ll make people remember their weak points and not dare to break the law?

So these letters has shown us a part of the truth about the rule of law. That these elements that go completely against the rule of law still has a tight grip over a lot of people. Understand this truth, and let’s stop losing ourselves in the big picture. You have no idea how much discrimination and injustice is hidden underneath the big picture.

Why do we keep a record of violations?

The law says that punishments should be fair, but why do we have to specially mark people even though they’ve already accepted that they’re going to be held and punished? Why do we have to continuously rob them of their opportunities and freedoms?

A common point of view is that if you have a criminal history, then compared to people with clean histories, you’re going to be more of a risk factor and have a greater chance of reoffense. But like I just said, most criminal behaviour actually doesn’t carry much moral weight to it at all. And most adminstrative violations isn’t addictive behaviour at all.

This belief basically doesn’t recognise the difference between breaking the law and committing a crime. And science still hasn’t come to a conclusion about whether or not people with a history of violations presents more of a risk or has a higher chance of re-offense.

But we blindly exaggerate the risk and possibility of re-offense and that pushes people to oppose society. The law has not only not removed prejudice, it has created and reinforced prejudice.

Another important reason is the thousands of years of history of heavy punishments. I’ve done some research into punishments that restrict employment, and I’ve found that in the last couple of years, limiting people who have broken the law into entering certain professions has become a default tool for administrative punishments.

From “bad influence celebrities” being banned from working for doing drugs or sleeping with sex workers, to normal taxi drivers being banned off of platforms for turning down rides. For people who do drugs, even if they’ve successfully quit, there aren’t any employment opportunities left to them.

I did some rough calculations, and there are only two jobs that someone with a drug history can do: domestic help or take out delivery. But the “Drug Prohibition Act” specifically rules, “Rehabilitated addicts should not be discriminated against in schooling, employment, and enjoying societal benefits. Relevant departments should organise manpower to give assistance and direction to help rehabilitated addicts get into schools, find work, and get societal help.”

When administrations limit or ban people from these professions, they don’t think at all about whether or not the crimes these people committed have anything to do with their jobs at all, and whether or not these violations actually make them more risky or have a higher chance of re-offense.

These blunt restrictions completely robbed people of their freedom of career and the associated right to property, to dignity, and it has change the purpose of punishment to prevention.

If the goal of a country’s penalty system is to “kill the chicken to intimidate the monkey”, then it’s doomed to a lifetime of heavy punishments. And excessive punishment or excessive prevention will cause an excessive expansion in a country’s power to punish, and the power to punish will cause a weakening of personal rights protections.

Aside from a philosophy of heavy punishments, another reason we label people with a history is to split everyone in society into different castes, probably also for ease of management. From people with clean histories, to people with a history of violations, to people with a history of crimes, their societal prestige gets lower and lower, and their basic rights get smaller too.

This method might help you manage society better, but behind it all, the reform of “from caste to contract” has never taken place. Caste society still exists in a more subtle and yet much more damaging way.

We say that time heals all wounds, but when you read these letters, you’ll find that the law doesn’t. The law will remember every mistake, and it’ll continuously remind you at every important moment in your life, “You’re a sinner.” Is that fair?

The National Bureau of Statistics shows that from 2910 to 2023, Chinese police resolved 40.35 million cases of public safety violations, 8.07 million cases per year. This is an enormous number. It means more and more people have a history of violations.

When I saw this number, I couldn’t help but think if we don’t address this problem properly, then at the speed of 8 million people per year, are we that far off from everyone being a violator of the law?

Acting to advance the rule of law:

Thankfully, this iceberg of systemic discrimination is slowly melting as a result of public consciousness.

In 2023, when the first draft of the “Public Safety Management Law” amendment was posted on line, we were happy to find this constructive rule in it: “For those who are under 18 years of age at the time of the public safety violation, the record of violation should be sealed and not be provided to any workplace or individual.” This is a major protection for underage minors and prevented a label of violating the law from affect the life of underage minors.

But there are a lot of limitations on the wording of this rule and where it can be applied. Can we not advance one more step? At least expand the sealing of violation records from underage minors to all people. And specify in the law that lower governments are not allowed to require people reveal their history of violations when seeking a job, or ban people with a history of violations from certain careers.

By the 21st of July, 2024, the 20th Third Plenary Session decided to seal records of light and minor crimes. When I saw this sentence, I posted to social media, “The law always says a major case can illuminate minor cases. If the records of light and minor crimes should be sealed, then are we closer to sealing records of violations?”

Every time I read these letters, and I see people’s anger, resentment, depression, and dissatisfaction, I honestly didn’t even know how to comfort them at first, because everything you can say seems to weak and pointless in front of their heavy lives. I can understand. I can empathise. But the more I repeat that, the more I feel I’m pointless.

But after I became a place to vent, it’s like I am participating in their lives, and I feel a certain responsibility. Every time I don’t know how to respond, I remember a movie I saw once, The Best Is Yet To Come. It talks about the story of how journalists were able to push back against Hep B discrimination.

The protagonist of the movie was a reporter named Han Dong. He wanted to interview people who had Hep B to record how the system impacts their personal lives. But unexpectedly, at first, everyone refused to be interviewed, and the reason they gave for the refusal was all the same. “Writing about it won’t change anything.”

So Han Dong asked them, “So? So you’ll just close your doors and complain to each other? What about after that? Just keep living with it? Can we not try to change things?”

Yes, rather than complain, rather than getting angry, we can also act. Action is what brings chance.

Now that I write back, I will tell people with a record of violations, don’t feel shame for your past, don’t endlessly repent, because shame will make people blame everything on themselves. It’ll blind you to the fact that the reason you feel shamed isn’t just because you broke the law, but also because the system is unfair. The unfairness of this system needs to be changed, and maybe fate selected you to be the one to bring it about.

But changing a system requires courage and determination and also patience. Even the obvious systemic discrimination about Hep B still took nearly 20 years to resolve.

So after reading so many letters, aside from writing legal commentary, I also want to write these people’s stories down, if only to remind myself and all other legal workers: the law isn’t just an abstract set of principles and systems. It impacts every specific person. Rather than building a grand system of language, our job should be to make the law deserve the trust and respect people put in it.

I remember a young man writing to me and saying that a singer he really liked used a famous quote for his song, “Can this world get better?” From 2019, when he broke the law, he has been using that sentence as his Wechat profile image, because he thinks this world can get better, and it can give young people who have made mistakes a chance.

I had the opportunity to meet this singer and I told him about that young man’s story, and asked him to write something to encourage this young man. The singer thought about it and write down, “Can this world get better? You tell me.”

The law affects everyone:

What made me and many legal workers happy is that the notice finally came.

This year, 27th of June, after two years, the “Public Safety Management Act” is finally finished being amended. The law now specifically states in line 135, “Records of public safety violations should be sealed and not provided to any work place or individual.”

This means that whether you’re underaged or an adult, all of your violations will be sealed. Without approval from the right offices and going through a just legal process, you don’t have to reveal it to just anyone now.

This is still far from the “wiped clean” that we want. It still allows people to look the records up, and is very vague about who can look it up, why, and how.

But saying that public safety violations should be sealed is already a huge step forward for the rule of law, and behind this step forward is countless people’s tireless work.

After the law was edited, I received many letters again. The man who once expressed disappointment in the amendment said, “Do you know? The last 9 years, I have lived like the dead, without any joy. This day has finally arrived. Thank you, professor. If my records are ever wiped, I will work extra hard for this nation and be grateful to the government.”

If we think back to the process of amending the Public Safety Management Act, when the first draft was posted on the China People’s Representatives Net in 2023, nearly 90,000 people provided nearly 120,000 suggestions, creating a record for legal amendments. The second draft received nearly 8000 suggestions.

Perhaps it’s due to such widespread societal participation, that the requirement that wearing clothing that harms the Chinese people’s national spirit might result in detainment, or that swearing at police officers should be heavily punished, or that you must leave biological data at the police station after entering any kind of public safety conflict with others, or other lines that were very vague and could cause in overstep of power in the first draft were all deleted or edited.

The problem of a criminal record also received a lot of feedback. Some people with records even hand-wrote suggestions and photographed it and posted it online in order to express their sincerity. So people’s hard work can be seen in every advancement of the law.

We often say that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. The ultimate goal of the law is to remove prejudice, overcome discrimination, and not create or reinforce discrimination by establishing systemic barriers. The point of rule of law is to protect everyone’s dignity, including those who have broken the law.

Although the amended law is far from ideal, think about it. Without the hopes and hard work that we all put into it, this law could’ve easily looked like something else, something even more unacceptable.

So what we need to do is to protect and treasure the legal process we have made, and prevent the law from being captured by traditional concepts like over-punishments, over-prevention, and over-intimidation.

After all, you know how it goes, “The law affects every one.”

Okay, thank you everyone.”

Comments say, “The cases this article talks about aren’t representative enough. There are a lot of cases of victims of domestic violence, whose own children beg her not to call the police because if their father gets sentenced, it’ll affect their future.”

“Not wearing a seat belt is the realm of traffic police. It wouldn’t show up in your public safety record. It’s two completely different system. Did you fire your arrow first and draw the target in later?”

“As soon as I saw the second case I knew it was all made up. Not wearing a seatbelt just results in some points deducted and a fine. It’s not going to leave a record. Have some common sense! This article clearly has ulterior motives.”

“That’s a lot of words to write about fucking nothing. If I could make up this much bullshit about my graduating thesis, I wouldn’t have worried every day about how to make my word count.”