Political Repression and Criminalization in China

Across the world, political opponents and dissidents in authoritarian regimes are targeted by the state with diverse forms of repression, from censorship to over politicized criminalization. But even as these regimes tend to adopt specific laws to outlaw certain forms of government critique, making broad swaths of political activity illegal, political opponents are not always charged with violations of those specialized laws. Rather, many are charged with other garden variety crimes related to corruption, fraud, embezzlement, and other pretexts. For the final session of our Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control speaker series we will be joined by Jennifer Pan, who will present and discuss a recent paper, “Disguised Repression: Targeting Opponents with Non-Political Crimes to Undermine Dissent.” We’ll discuss why authoritarian governments strategically weaponize the existing criminal code to target some of their most high-profile critics, turning apolitical violations into political weapons against some of the loudest dissenting voices.

Click here to register for the Zoom

Speaker

Jennifer Pan is a political scientist whose research focuses on political communication, digital media, and authoritarian politics. She is the Sir Robert Ho Tung Professor of Chinese Studies, Professor of Communication, and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Her research uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity to answer questions about the role of digital media in politics, including how political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age and how preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result. She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government. 

The Criminal Law as a Tool of Authoritarian Control speaker series is organized by Katy Naples-Mitchell, Program Director of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and Sandra Susan Smith, Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice (HKS); Faculty Director, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management; Professor of Sociology (FAS).