Zhao Hong on state overreach, women's rights, cyberviolence & more
Peking University law professor makes the case for reining in state control.
Zhao Hong 赵宏, Associate Professor with Tenure at Peking University Law School, specialising in public law and administrative law, has risen to one of the most frequent, brave, and high-profile public intellectuals on Chinese law in recent years. She also regularly contributes to 风声OPINION, a Phoenix New Media blog that features commentaries on current affairs and controversies in China.
She recently spoke with 学人Scholar, a similar news platform for scholars’ analyses of headline issues. The conversation appeared in two parts on Scholar’s official WeChat blog on September 25 and 26; presented here is a single, consolidated translation of the interview.
State power, Zhao Hong warns, has swelled on the back of crises, spawning counterintuitive cases that offend common sense: protesters in Henan immobilised by sudden “red” health codes; urban “tidiness” drives that punish shop signs and flower stands; zealous crackdowns on fireworks; and the routine harvesting of facial data without explicit consent, hastening a drift from governance to a “data Leviathan”. She grounds the critique in a dense run of real-world controversies that have stirred wide public debate.
Gender, too—most starkly in the trafficking of women—along with moral overreach, cyberviolence, and rights consciousness, is also spotlighted in the interview.
Zhao’s response is lawyerly rather than hectoring. From such cases, she argues, legal professionals should excavate the deeper defects in rule-making and enforcement; probe a little further and clusters of similar cases will force their way onto official agendas, opening space for change. To students and legal professionals who feel powerless, her counsel is pragmatic: do what can be done, even indirectly. Takedowns of essays happen, yet moderating the tone still permits a voice. History moves unevenly; progress may lag, but it need not be written off.
—Yuxuan Jia
专访赵宏：法治的价值是在不确定中提供确定性；人生是值得体验的，哪怕在不好的时候
Interview with Zhao Hong: Rule of law offers certainty in uncertain times; life is worth experiencing, even in hard times
Intervening in Social Life with Professional Expertise
Scholar: Professor Luo Xiang [a popular Chinese criminal law scholar] once said that one senses in you a kind of “righteous anger.” Does that have something to do with your upbringing in Northwest China?
Zhao Hong: Ever since Luo Xiang “misled” everyone in that friendly way, people seem to think I am angry all the time. In truth, that impression is filtered through friendship. We all carry certain imprints; it is hard to say whether mine come from my hometown or from my professional training. From an outsider’s perspective, I may at times look like a plainspoken Northwesterner, and such traits are easily attributed to “being from the Northwest.” But I myself cannot tell whether those reactions are regionally rooted. One’s hometown certainly leaves a mark, yet I suspect the influence of my legal background has been greater.
From the vantage point of administrative law, one of the field’s core commitments is to limit the power of administrative organs and to protect citizens’ rights—a stance that runs through virtually every article in my book. Why has this issue garnered more attention in the last two years? Initially, I didn’t anticipate this shift before the book was published. I later came to understand that it reflects many people’s immediate, lived experience in recent years: we have all begun to realise that power is right beside us, inextricably intertwined with our everyday lives.
Scholar: You have argued that ideas about the rule of law are not indestructible—that a kind of “free fall” can occur at any time. For you, then, is writing a way of intervening?
Zhao Hong: For me, writing is indeed a tool. It is, first and foremost, a way of observing. Before I started writing for the public, I did not have any particular mode of engagement with everyday life. Although I study law and teach with case materials, most of the cases we discuss in class are court decisions, focusing on doctrinal techniques and legal craftsmanship. Such cases are like carefully pruned “bonsai landscapes,” which rarely reveal the actual level of the rule of law in society. It was only when I began public writing, faced with a large number of real cases, that I realised the vast gap between the state of the rule of law and my expectations, and the chasm that separates legal professionals from the general public. My hope, through writing, is to help bridge that divide.
Not long ago, a television station manager said that news should only celebrate achievements and never report anything negative. That, to my mind, defies common sense. The primary purpose of journalism is oversight, not praise. By analogy, if legal professionals do not speak up, the public’s legal consciousness may steadily recede.
Some time ago, the National People’s Congress conducted a “filing and review” check on the legality of a complete ban on fireworks and firecrackers. While setting off fireworks certainly has its pros and cons, is a one-size-fits-all ban the right approach? I recently saw a video where an enforcement officer used a fire extinguisher on a firework that a girl was playing with. This is clearly illegal and goes against common sense.
Instances like these are not uncommon. If there is no insistence on digging deeper and maintaining sustained attention, these incidents will remain unknown to the public or unreported by the media, and therefore uncorrected. As a result, people may gradually come to accept such things as perfectly ordinary.
Scholar: In public discourse, it is important for professionals to step in. As someone trained in law, what role do you think professionals should play in public life, and what responsibilities should they bear?
Zhao Hong: Expertise brings rationality and strength. Take legal commentary as an example. Much of what we write seeks to permeate public discourse with reasoned argument rather than mere expressions of feeling. Even when a case appears obviously unlawful, there is still room for careful analysis. It is the responsibility of legal professionals to convey a professional stance and legal principles through individual cases.
Legal commentary is different from pieces that simply vent emotion. Expressing feelings is legitimate, but once the emotion is released, the next step is to ask where, precisely, the legal problem lies. That is where professionals come in.
I wrote an article about the Xingtai urban management incident. [In January 2024, urban management officers in Xintai, Hebei Province, entered a tailor’s shop and demanded the removal of an advertising board in front of the shop’s window. The shopkeeper clarified that it wasn’t attached to the glass but was hanging from the ceiling. The officers insisted that even so, it must be half a meter to one meter away from the glass, leading to a heated confrontation. The shopkeeper, frustrated, angrily asked, “Which animal came to inspect again?”]
The video angered me, as life is already hard for people at the bottom, and in this case, the officers’ actions were clearly unlawful. However, for legal professionals, there is much more to analyse, such as the exact legal basis for urban management enforcement.
The officers in the video invoked “rectifying the city’s appearance,” but the very construction of such a legal basis is problematic. If a “civilised city” [an important governance benchmark for cities in China, ranking high in the performance metrics of local officials] is measured solely by visual tidiness, where does that legal standard come from? Should streets be kept immaculate and free of any commercial signage? This clearly conflicts with the logic of a functioning market society, because if shops cannot have signs, how can they operate?
This is not an isolated case. In one city in Yunnan, a new shop placed two congratulatory flower stands from friends outside, only to be fined 200 yuan by the urban management authority. In another instance, the owner of a small grocery store, with a relatively hidden storefront, had their child put a desk at the entrance to do homework, which was labelled as “operating outside the shopfront.” In situations like these, it’s clear that something is wrong. What needs to be done is to examine the legality of the supposed legal basis. Moving forward, there could be a push for a “filing and review” check on the basis for such enforcement. If the rules that allow for this kind of rigid law enforcement action are rescinded, similar incidents could be avoided.
These cases also invite deeper reflection. When drafting rules on urban appearance, has there been an over-reliance on a single, appearance-based criterion, while neglecting the basic needs of low-income residents? Local governments now emphasise building a good business environment, but a city’s appeal isn’t just about grandeur or polish; it’s about whether people find it livable and feel respected. From cases like these, legal professionals can identify deeper legal issues. If there’s further probing, a mass of similar cases could be brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities, and change can follow. In this sense, professional intervention differs from news reporting.
Scholar: Compared to news commentary, is professional legal commentary more practical?
Zhao Hong: Not necessarily, because we work in concert. In my public writing, the people who have most encouraged me, moved me, and even taught me how to speak to a broader audience are press people. From them, I have learned the fighting posture of the profession—whenever there is the slightest opening, they seize the opportunity to see a matter through.
They also taught me how to address readers. When I first started writing commentaries, I wrote as I would for academic journals. It was too technical and too scholarly, so editors often asked me to lower the level of specialisation. They helped me understand that writing for a general audience is not the same as professional writing.
An academic paper is a “mind-to-mind” process, whereas a public-facing piece needs to begin from the heart, engaging the reader emotionally first, before presenting a professional stance and analysis with the mind. I used to write commentaries as if they were journal articles—comprehensive, aiming for airtight logic—but that can hinder the flow of the piece and its core ideas. Editors encouraged me to see that a commentary need not be exhaustive. It should foreground the essentials and communicate the central concept.
After I started my column, I met many friends from the media. I’ve witnessed how, even within a constrained space for expression, they persist, which is no small feat. Some cases hardly require legal analysis, as the illegality is so obvious, yet editors still believe such pieces should be written. It is only by writing them that the baseline of common sense is safeguarded.
Sometimes editors pass along readers’ comments. At first, they removed negative remarks for fear I could not take them. After a while, when I minded them less, they showed me the full range. I actually found them interesting because they revealed where doubts and disagreements lie, which made my next piece more targeted. Take the case of disclosing information about gropers on the Hangzhou subway. To advance government information disclosure, the authorities made public the personal data of all identified gropers. Before commissioning my piece, the editor ran a survey. To my surprise, over 90 per cent supported disclosure, and some even said, “Sex offenders are beyond forgiveness and should be executed.”
I argued against disclosure. In law, there is the principle that the punishment must fit the offence: sanctions must be proportionate to the wrongdoing. Groping is indeed wrong and causes great distress to women, but the maximum legal penalty for such conduct is fifteen days’ administrative detention. In the digital age, if personal information is fully disclosed, the result is a form of “social death.” Morally, condemnation is called for, but legally, such an approach is not justified.
Anticipating criticism, I stated in that piece that the author is a woman and that I personally abhor such behaviour. Yet as a professional, the principle of proportionate justice must be upheld. One cannot overpunish an individual. After the article was published, I saw many negative comments, but they helped me see what people truly care about, so that next time I could explain the legal issues more clearly.
To create an environment safe for women, there is no need to rely on the deterrent of “social death” for gropers. Other means are available. It is also important to emphasise that the law is not omnipotent. Even if every wrongdoer were executed, disorder would still recur, because human nature is complex. Therefore, the principle that the punishment must fit the offence must be upheld.
What concerns me is that this form of punishment could be casually imitated. Later, there were several other decisions to disclose personal information, such as in cases categorised as “assembling for homosexual licentious acts,” where enforcement documents were exposed after the acts were reported.
In the course of writing, I encounter many different views. I try to respond to them, and that exchange constitutes a healthy interaction between the public and legal experts.
Scholar: Before you began public writing, did you participate in public life in other ways?
Zhao Hong: As a university academic, offering legislative advice or attending meetings at administrative and legislative organs to discuss issues with the relevant departments are the conventional ways we participate in public life. Yet this mode of engagement faces information barriers. What I see is largely pre-packaged information, and I can only offer limited technical comments on legislative proposals, with little direct connection to lived reality. That said, this work still has value. When the revision to the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security was drafted, I communicated with the legislative body to understand their considerations, then assessed whether those considerations were legally sound and, if so, how to properly express them in legal terms. These are fundamental responsibilities of a legal professional.
Unmasking the Prejudices Behind Cyberviolence
Scholar: When experts’ views directly clash with popular opinion, cyberviolence can follow. Even Professor Luo Xiang has been targeted before. Have you encountered situations like this?
Zhao Hong: I don’t often read the comments, and I’m not as well-known as Professor Luo. There are harsh remarks, of course, but so far, I haven’t experienced the kind of cyberviolence he faced. I think that if one avoids negative feedback entirely, it’s easy to remain trapped within one’s own biases. Sometimes, extreme statements can actually reveal the limitations of one’s own perspective.
Professor Luo was recently attacked online after discussing whether the children of criminal offenders should be eligible for the civil service. I actually commissioned that piece, and both of us believed that barring offenders’ children from public service goes against basic legal principles. At China’s current stage of development, reverting to a logic of collective liability should be avoided. We assumed there would be no issue or risk in addressing this topic, yet a large number of people denounced it, which genuinely shocked us.
But when we reviewed those comments, we saw the considerations behind them. A typical one was to equate “criminal offenders” with “corrupt officials.” Legally, there are many categories of crime, and corruption is only a small subset. What makes up a large share of cases are offences such as drunk driving and assisting information network criminal activities. If a parent is convicted of drunk driving and, as a result, the child is barred from entering the civil service, that goes too far. One boy wrote to Professor Luo to say that his father had abused his mother. After the father was convicted, he was finally free of the nightmare and studied hard, only to discover that because his father is a criminal offender, he cannot sit for the civil service exam. Is that not absurd?
There was another response we did not anticipate. Quite a few law professors commented on our WeChat Moments [similar to Facebook or Instagram posts visible to friends] that the children of offenders can do other jobs, such as running a café or delivering food, but should not become civil servants. At its core, this reflects a subconscious belief that civil servants form a privileged caste and that public employment is a right reserved for the few. In my view, being a civil servant is simply one ordinary line of work.
It was only when what I took to be common sense was met with such broad opposition that I began to see the root of the problem. From that perspective, negative comments have value and deserve to be taken seriously. They also remind us that whoever we are, we live within our own prejudices.
Scholar: In your book, you mention that some of your WeChat blog posts were taken down. When an article is deleted, does it dampen your enthusiasm for writing?
Zhao Hong: Not anymore, although my initial reactions were quite strong. When you’re eager to express yourself and your piece gets deleted right after publication, it’s painful. It makes you feel like much of what you do is futile and sink to a sense of nihilism. I used to bristle when editors told me not to write a certain way, and I wanted to convey my views in my own voice. Now, I don’t. I ask myself what the purpose of my work is, and I’m willing to make concessions and compromises to achieve that purpose. So, when an editor asks me to revise a piece into a more temperate version, I can fully accept it because the most important thing is to communicate the message and get the matter done.
In addition, I now write more quickly, thanks to training from people in the press. I used to polish every sentence after finishing a draft. Editors would urge me to publish within the window of attention, as timing might help move events along. Sometimes, a modest adjustment in tone allows the message to be communicated, and outcomes can still be advanced, though this is never the result of my efforts alone. When one broods over a deletion and thinks, “How could such a well-written piece be removed?” it’s, in some ways, inflating one’s own importance. Vanity plays a role there.
Scholar: In recent years, cybercrime has become a hot topic in academic circles. You dedicate an entire chapter of your book to online order, yet you argue that the conditions are not yet ripe for dedicated legislation on cyberviolence, and that a hasty rollout risks returning violence for violence. In your view, what would constitute “ripe” conditions for such legislation?
Zhao Hong: At the very least, there is still no clear legal definition of “cyberviolence,” making the scope and targets of its sanctions, if any, uncertain.
Experiences of cyberviolence vary for everyone. I was at a Phoenix TV event, and when the subject of cyberviolence was brought up, a student from the Communication University of China strongly supported severe penalties. When the host asked if he had personally experienced it, he said yes—before the college entrance exam, he posted photos and personal information on Weibo [the Chinese equivalent of Twitter], and many commenters mocked his appearance. He considered that cyberviolence. I worry that if the term is defined too broadly, innocent people may be harmed, because people often make impulsive judgments about others. While morally problematic, such behaviour does not necessarily warrant legal punishment. Once punishment is triggered, the scope can get bigger and bigger, sweeping in not just the initiators, but also those who amplify the harm or contribute in various ways.
In the online world, everyone has incomplete information, so narratives often shift. Take the case in Datong, Shanxi Province, [where a man raped his fiancée the day after they became engaged. He was sentenced to three years in prison, yet many (mostly male) netizens question whether it was an extortion attempt for more bridal money on the woman’s side.] I believe the woman spoke out courageously, wrote extensively on the case, and criticised men. However, if later facts were to reverse the storyline, people might retroactively label her earlier posts as cyberviolence and target her. There is still a lack of clarity about the boundary between cyberviolence and ordinary freedom of expression, as well as the threshold at which cyberviolence warrants punishment. Using quantitative triggers, such as 500 or 5,000 reposts, as standards for punishment risks over-enforcement, chills free speech, and creates fear of speaking out at all.
Nor should we place unrealistic expectations on the online order. Take the case of Liu Xuezhou, which I found heartbreaking. [Liu Xuezhu, sold by his biological parents at birth and later reconnected with them, faced their rejection. After enduring relentless online harassment, the 15-year-old took his life, leaving a note calling for accountability for human traffickers and online abusers.] From the start of his search for his biological parents, he relied on the internet and projected much of his emotion into the virtual world. When strangers suddenly turned on him en masse, his psyche collapsed.
The eventual outcome should hold some perpetrators accountable for cyberviolence, but this should not justify escalating penalties for all cases. Harsher legal sanctions do not necessarily prevent such incidents. Regardless of the severity of the Criminal Law, violence persists in real life, reflecting a deeper issue of human nature. This is even more so in the virtual world, where there is no need to show faces or bear the moral burdens of the real world. Juveniles, in particular, should be reminded not to over-rely on the internet or invest all their emotions in it.
Law must always navigate among competing values. It is important to recognise both the prevalence of cyberviolence and the fact that the internet is a channel for expression where many significant developments have been driven by persistent online voices. Consider the Xiao Huamei case; it was sustained attention by netizens that helped bring about the eventual outcome. [Xiao Huamei was abducted, sold multiple times, and eventually ended up in a remote village in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. She gave birth to eight children there while being abused and confined, leading to serious physical harm and schizophrenia. The case gained widespread attention in 2022 when a video of her, chained by the neck and living in a dilapidated house, went viral. Xiao Huamei’s traffickers and abusers were sentenced to eight to eleven years in prison in 2023.]
And then there is, for instance, the “Arctic Catfish” scandal, in which a girl boasted about her grandfather and was heavily criticised. For her, it felt like cyberviolence, but if all such speech were suppressed, public oversight would become impossible. [In March 2023, a netizen named “Arctic Catfish” boasted online about her family’s wealth and claimed her grandfather was a former Shenzhen official. The grandfather was later revealed to be a former head of the Shenzhen Transportation Bureau. He was found guilty of corruption, illegal profiteering, and obstructing an investigation. As a result, he was expelled from the Communist Party, had his pension downgraded, and was required to return his illegal gains.]
In theory, the most straightforward way to curb cyberviolence would be to require platforms to pre-screen all user speech. The problem is that this harms freedom of expression. Therefore, balancing these interests is often required. Since the legal concepts remain unclear, unilateral expansion of enforcement strength or scope should be avoided.
Since March 2023, major platforms have introduced anti-cyberviolence mechanisms, including a one-click reporting function. Users who are reported for sustained abusive language may be muted or permanently banned, and other technical measures may be taken, such as blocking direct messages from strangers. There is nothing inherently wrong with such technical steps on the platform side. But if the law intervenes forcefully, the intensity may become excessive. Once the law enters, platforms will be saddled with extremely heavy obligations, such as pre-screening. Platforms are not law-enforcement agencies and cannot reliably distinguish cyberviolence from ordinary speech. The likely result is the deletion of perfectly legitimate content.
Law Is Not a Tool to Coercively Elevate Moral Demands on Individuals
Scholar: In your book, you caution against the moralization of adjudication and urge that morality should not become a standard for judicial decisions. Could you elaborate on the role of morality within the rule of law?
Zhao Hong: Law should certainly align with widely held moral understandings, yet it must be remembered that law represents morality at its minimum threshold. In legal education and outreach, people often say that without our workshops, they would have almost broken the law. At first, this seemed a source of pride. Upon reflection, if the law contradicts common moral intuitions, there is likely a problem with the law. If one can easily “slip” into illegality, the fault may lie less with the individual than with the legal rule.
Law should be aligned with ordinary moral consciousness, but it must not escalate moral demands without limit. If the law continuously ratchets up the moral expectations imposed on ordinary people, it exceeds its own boundaries.
One illustrative example is the Jiang Ge case. [In 2016, 24-year-old Chinese student Jiang Ge was fatally stabbed outside her friend Liu Xin’s rented apartment in Tokyo by Liu’s ex-boyfriend, Chen Shifeng; Chen received a 20-year prison sentence in Japan the following year, and a Chinese court later ordered Liu to pay nearly 700,000 yuan in civil damages to Jiang’s mother.] The civil judgment drew broad public approval. It also raises several questions: should Liu bear criminal liability? Imputing homicide to her, in my view, sets the bar a bit too high. Imagine an assailant with a knife at your heels—you make it through the door a second before your friend. Would you lock the door? The law cannot demand heroism, and in most jurisdictions, this would not amount to a crime.
Conversely, since Liu Xin introduced the risk and Jiang Ge’s death was connected to her, assigning some civil liability to compensate Jiang’s mother is justifiable. The concern lies in how the judgment was reached: it quotes heavily not on legal rules but on core values and socialist morality, and uses them to mount moral condemnation at Liu Xin. That moves beyond the proper scope of law. Moral considerations may inform legal reasoning, but only after being filtered through established legal norms. Otherwise, the law risks becoming a vehicle for moral denunciation by anyone.
When the law limitlessly elevates moral expectations for everyone, it creates many problems. This is why I firmly oppose lifetime blacklists in the entertainment industry for performers with “tainted” records. Drug use or solicitation violates the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security; it is not a criminal offence. Why impose a permanent industry ban when administrative penalties have been imposed? The justification is largely moral—public figures are expected to be exemplars, and their misconduct is said to send the wrong signal—so the sanction must be harsh. That approach uses law to coerce higher private morality, and it warrants caution.
The relationship between law and morality has two sides. On the one hand, law should reflect widely held moral views; on the other, it must not limitlessly ratchet up moral demands. If it does, it oversteps its bounds and imposes a second judgment. In criminal cases, courts should only assess whether the elements of the offence are satisfied and determine the corresponding liability—not compile a ledger of moral failings. That is not the law’s task, and pursuing it distorts the law’s basic orientation. Otherwise, moral judgment slips into trial by the public, and professional institutions are hollowed out, which is a deeply troubling prospect.
Scholar: Is this because China has never had a historical or traditional “spirit of the rule of law”?
Zhao Hong: Historically, Chinese discourse has oscillated between Legalism and Confucianism; today, the emphasis is on the spirit of the rule of law. For citizens living in the modern age, when the two normative orders collide, the task is to distinguish them clearly. China does not lack a spirit of the rule of law; its modern rule-of-law tradition is simply shorter. Many still view law through a Legalist lens, thinking of severe, heavy-handed punishment. That, however, is only one side of the law. The missing side is the protection of individual rights and freedoms and the restraint of public power. Ultimately, the rule of law is oriented toward the state. This is central to the legal profession: law not only restrains private individuals from harming others; it also restrains the state from overstepping and infringing individual rights.
On one occasion, I taught a rule-of-law class at my son’s school. I told the children that if the word “law” only brings to mind thieves or wrongdoers, the police who arrest them, and indictments that follow, that picture is incomplete. Law also has another dimension: it is a tool that protects everyone. Even those who are vulnerable in society have rights and freedoms that deserve protection and respect. For children, who holds power over them? Parents and teachers are the absolute power holders. That is why the Law on the Protection of Minors restricts parents and teachers from arbitrarily infringing upon children’s rights.
In public legal education and outreach, I try to convey this other face of the rule of law: even if you err, fall short morally, lack ability, or stand among the vulnerable, you should still be respected and live with dignity. That is the basic ethos of the rule of law. Much of my case writing pushes back against the Legalist fixation on penal severity. Faced with social problems, responses too often default to harsher penalties and an ever-widening scope of punishment—measures seldom shown to improve governance and sometimes likely to incentivise more serious wrongdoing.
As the scope of punishment keeps expanding, people can easily stumble into it unawares. For example, the first-reading draft revision of the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security proposed five days’ administrative detention for opening another person’s parcel without authorisation. When I read that clause, I had just opened a neighbour’s package by mistake. Five days’ detention can carry lifelong consequences: the record may be indelible and can affect civil recruitment or graduate admissions. Yet such mistakes are fairly common. Many presume that intent is a precondition in such cases, but the General Provisions of that Law do not require subjective intent for punishment. The clause should therefore be revised to add intent as a limiting element.
When the scope of punishment keeps widening, anyone can be cast as an offender. That is not the aim of a modern rule-of-law society. The deep-seated Legalist mentality of penal severity and collective liability—guilt by association that treats one person’s crime as tainting a whole family or even three generations—should be set aside. Such thinking has immensely harmful social effects. Law should return to its proper orientation: safeguarding personal dignity and individual freedom, so that everyone feels respected and protected and can recognise a healthy rule-of-law order.
Do Not Let Outmoded Customs and Prejudice Breach the Law’s Bottom Line
Scholar: Beyond Legalism’s fixation on harsh punishment, the film Blind Mountain left me a lasting impression. Even when police entered the village to arrest the men involved in trafficking women, the entire village mobilised to obstruct them, surrounding the police car and ultimately thwarting the rescue.
Zhao Hong: This reflects a traditional principle of shielding one’s kin. It raises a question: how should the rule of law confront entrenched, outmoded customs in close-knit communities? In situations like this, the law’s stance must be unambiguous. After the “Xiao Huamei” case, many noted how equivocal the law has been toward women trafficking. The statutory penalty for purchasing a trafficked woman remains light, typically three to five years. Why? Purchase has often been treated merely as an infringement of personal liberty. In Xiao Huamei’s case, after she was sold, she obtained an ID card and a marriage certificate, bore that many children, and for a long period, no authority intervened. In fact, the system acquiesced.
Some localities still cling to outmoded customs, reasoning that poor, unmarried men justify tolerating the buying and selling of women. But women are not commodities; the prohibition on trafficking women is a non-negotiable baseline of modern society. Even if many people turn out to block and obstruct a rescue, the state has a duty to secure a woman’s freedom. What is at stake is not only her personal liberty but also her dignity.
The law’s bottom line cannot be diluted to accommodate outmoded customs or traditional beliefs. Some contend that if a woman from poverty is sold into a relatively wealthier household and has borne children, dissolving the marriage would destabilise society. That baseline remains non-negotiable. To relax, it would once again instrumentalise women as bodies to be bought and used for reproduction. A woman’s reproductive autonomy is a fundamental right: whether to have children, and whether to have them within or outside marriage, are her decisions, as an extension of control over her own body.
Scholar: In her book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan argues that women tend to approach moral questions in affective terms, emphasising care and connection, whereas most men, when confronting hard moral dilemmas, rely on personal autonomy and the impartial, rational application of rules or principles. As a female legal writer, how do you view this claim?
Zhao Hong: In my observation, the claim is not necessarily accurate. Women are often tagged as “overly emotional,” as though men were more rational and rule-oriented. Both sides of this issue deserve consideration. I do not fully endorse the generalisation, as it can be read in a less favourable light; yet it carries a positive implication that women may more readily empathise with others. In my work with male colleagues in law, differences between men and women are observable. This does not mean women necessarily interpret others through emotion, but women’s capacity for empathy does tend to be higher.
We remain a society deeply shaped by patriarchal norms. Many women have, to varying degrees, experienced moments of being disrespected or devalued as members of a weaker group. That lived experience becomes almost genetic and can translate into greater empathy for the vulnerable when handling cases. Men, especially highly professional and relatively successful men, may learn respect and empathy for women, yet they often lack the firsthand experience of being the weaker party, so they may incline toward solutions grounded in theory and rules.
Returning to cases of women trafficking, women’s voices are nearly unanimous: regardless of how pressing the local “need” may seem, women are not to be bought or sold, because it is a matter of women’s dignity. Some men, though, may view the matter differently.
Another example comes from the Xi’an lockdown during COVID. A young woman complained in a group chat about having no access to sanitary pads, and some men dismissed her as being overly dramatic. It is a telling illustration of gender difference. Many men have never experienced period shaming, so they rank basic supplies in a way that sidelines other needs.
Scholar: As a female legal professional, do you have any distinctive gender observations or experiences?
Zhao Hong: In my experience, all women, whatever their position, are likely to encounter structural biases and constraints. Even as a professor, I frequently run into various forms of gender inequality.
For instance, people often ask whether, given how much I write, I still have time to care for my child. The question itself places you in a moral dilemma. If you say you do not, the listener will quietly judge you, because society expects women to fulfil the role of a good mother. If you say you do, they may immediately infer that you are less professional than male scholars, assuming you cannot devote yourself fully to work. I do not foreground my identity when I write and am not always conscious of being a female legal practitioner. Yet such questions remind me that there are differences between women and men, and I keep using myself as a case to observe where those differences arise.
I have long argued that, on gender issues, the primary duty-bearer is neither men nor women, but the state. Take child-rearing: why is women’s willingness to have children so low today? The state has not created a sufficiently supportive environment and has shifted much of the burden onto mothers and families. This is not merely a matter between the sexes; it also exposes a gap in state responsibility.
Scholar: You wrote, with respect to legislators and the public, “I can only pray for heaven’s protection.” That surprised me. I take it to imply that you feel your own capacity is limited. Are you optimistic about realising a rule-of-law ideal?
Zhao Hong: I remain fairly optimistic. After all, I am trained in law. If I give up, how am I supposed to get through the next decade or two before retirement? There’s plenty of illegality to see, but legal awareness is growing too.
Scholar: For a time, the “Chen Chunxiu identity theft” case and several similar incidents drew wide attention. [In 2020, Chen discovered records showing “she” had studied at Shandong University of Technology, though she had never received an offer. Investigators later found that, in 2004, a county peer, Chen Yanping, had used Chen’s identity and student file to complete the degree in Chen’s name. Forty-six people were disciplined, and hundreds of suspected identity-swap degrees came under investigation.] What is your view?
Zhao Hong: Most whose university places were taken through identity theft came from society’s most vulnerable groups. Once targeted, their fates were radically altered. After years of hard study in difficult conditions, they finally won admission only to have it quietly taken away. That is a loss many victims can scarcely process or accept.
I remember the displaced student said that every time she walked past a university campus, she wondered if trying a little harder might have changed her life. Two decades on, she learned it wasn’t a lack of effort at all—it was the bad luck of being targeted. After twenty years, what can the law give back? She wants to return to university, but can she? In doctrine, the university has no duty to re-admit her; offers expire. Even if the state pays compensation and the impostors are punished, lost chances are hard to restore. Time does not return. A life cannot be rerun.
Scholar: In your observation, how have the forms and frequency of unlawful conduct by organs of public power changed in recent years?
Zhao Hong: Without specific statistics, I cannot offer a quantitative assessment. What I can say is that recent years have marked an exceptional expansion of public power. In China, as elsewhere, power tends to expand in response to crises, and expansion often brings a contraction, and at times a degradation, of personal freedom and rights. Hence, the emergence of various extreme cases, some so counterintuitive that ordinary people find them at odds with common sense. Yet such cases also create opportunities for reflection.
In all circumstances, the rule of law retains its worth and is worth adhering to. It offers a sense of certainty and, above all, the assurance of a stable order. In recent years, however, many have felt growing uncertainty. It is precisely in such times that the value of the rule of law should be upheld, not diluted.
The Ultimate Orientation of Law Is to Protect Individual Rights
Scholar: When Professor Jiang Ping passed away, you wrote a memorial essay. Professor Jiang once said that the space for private law is granted by public law, and the scope of individual rights depends on the boundaries of state power. Has this statement influenced your life choices and public expressions?
Zhao Hong: From my undergraduate years on, President Jiang Ping was our spiritual exemplar. Whenever he came to lecture at the Changping campus of China University of Political Science and Law, the hall was packed, and we would skip dinner to attend. He offered us a powerful lesson about the rule of law: it exists to limit power and to protect private rights.
He clarified what public law is for. It is not to offer policy advice to administrative organs, but to police the boundaries of state power at all times, because those boundaries largely determine the scope of private rights. If public power expands without limits, how can private rights be secured? These ideas have deeply influenced me. As a leading civil-law scholar, Jiang Ping made it plain that the ultimate orientation of all law is to protect individual rights and to contend for those rights.
Scholar: Is the title of your book, Boundaries Between Power and Rights, connected to Professor Jiang Ping?
Zhao Hong: Not when I was writing it. Each case in Boundaries Between Power and Rights examines whether state administrative organs have crossed the limits they ought to observe. Public legal education is not about warning ordinary people what happens if they break the law. It is about telling them that they have rights and freedoms, and that these are precious. Its primary audience is state officials, reminding them that public power is bounded rather than limitless, and that the state should protect individual rights and keep within lawful limits.
Scholar: In the digital era, new problems have emerged, such as the scraping of facial data. Faced with a digital Leviathan, individual rights are easily infringed. What suggestions do you have for strengthening the protection of individual rights?
Zhao Hong: In recent years, my research has focused on the public law protection of personal information, so as to prevent the combination of state power and data technologies from turning into a “data Leviathan” against which individuals have no effective defence.
From a legal standpoint, I firmly oppose facial recognition because it so readily triggers personal data leaks. In recent years, there have been extreme instances of state monitoring and manipulation of personal data. Facial recognition would profoundly erode the balance between power and rights that the rule of law has painstakingly built, making power harder to resist. Once an individual’s every movement is recorded, surveillance and control become easy for the state. Public law should resist and actively guard against that.
On one hand, awareness of personal information protection is rising, but it remains insufficient. On the other hand, although China’s Personal Information Protection Law took effect in 2021, it falls short in giving personal information protection its due respect in many areas. Take facial recognition applications: travellers now board high-speed rail, fly, or enter campuses by scanning faces or ID cards. The convenience is obvious, but the risks beneath it are substantial.
According to the Personal Information Protection Law, facial images are extremely sensitive personal information, and their collection requires explicit individual consent. However, when did schools ever obtain everyone’s consent? They did not. Nor is individual consent sought for facial recognition when boarding high-speed rail or flights, or when entering residential compounds. The result is two choices: either forgo public services or forgo personal information.
Fundamentally, the state has not attached sufficient importance to personal information protection and the personal autonomy it embodies. Why is telecom fraud so prevalent in China? A crucial reason is the leakage of personal information. Leakage occurs at multiple points. Scanning one’s face or QR codes exposes personal data again and again. Protection is not only against third parties; people should also have the autonomy to decide when to disclose their information to the state. In practice, that is rarely possible. People are being “datafied,” left effectively naked in informational terms, with shrinking autonomy and growing subsumption into data. That is dangerous, hence moves to ban facial recognition in public spaces in the European Union.
Scholar: For individuals, it is very hard to seek accountability for information leaks. Evidence is difficult to obtain, and there are many hurdles to bringing a lawsuit. How do we prevent this situation?
Zhao Hong: If people take this issue seriously, recognise the value of personal information, and keep asserting their rights, change will follow. In a residential compound, for example, if residents insist on not surrendering this right, plans to install facial recognition may stall. The recent episode with China Judgments Online is instructive: when people noticed that fewer decisions were being posted and the site might even be shut down, scholars and lawyers pressed for transparency, and the outcry had an effect.
Too few people grasp what is at stake with facial recognition. During the pandemic, Zhengzhou’s “red health code” incident was a textbook case of data manipulation. Extremes like this show how frightening a data Leviathan can become when state power fuses with data technologies.
[In April 2022, after several rural banks in Henan froze withdrawals, anxious depositors travelled to Zhengzhou to seek redress. There, many found that their Covid “health codes” had turned red—a classification in China’s QR-code system that marks someone as high risk and automatically blocks access to transport and public venues, often triggering quarantine. The tactic effectively immobilised protesters, sparked a nationwide outcry online, and led to disciplinary penalties for Zhengzhou officials in June 2022.]
Law Is Not Violence Per Se
Scholar: What especially drew attention to your book may also be the line on its back cover: “For individuals, everything which is not forbidden by law is allowed; for public power, everything which is not authorised by law is prohibited.” How do you view the relationship between law as legitimate violence and law as a system of social rules?
Zhao Hong: The state must employ its repressive apparatus to answer wrongdoing, and that accords with public expectations of justice. If homicide or rape carried no repressive consequences, no one would accept it. But repression must be proportionate to the illegality involved and must not expand without limit. Law should not be conflated with violence; behind repression stands the rule.
The larger problem today is that the law has drifted from retribution toward preemption. The logic runs like this: if you bear a moral stain, then to prevent recidivism, you must be punished with exceptional severity to deter you and to send a strong signal to others. That crosses the boundary into over-prevention. It treats everyone as a potential offender, and once a person errs, society pushes them to the other side with no path back, stripping them of the chance to make amends.
Scholar: You previously researched the Reeducation Through Labour (RTL) system. As is known, RTL allowed the deprivation of liberty without a court judgment, relying on administrative regulations rather than statutes. The system was abolished in 2013, and those who enforced it were not held to account. How do you view this?
Zhao Hong: Frontline officers are not capable of judging whether the rule they enforce is a “good” or “bad” law. Imposing liability solely because that rule is later condemned may be unfair, since laws are promulgated for universal compliance, and individual opt-outs would make order impossible. That said, where an officer had space for moral judgment yet chose rigid enforcement at the expense of another’s basic rights, holding that officer legally responsible is, in my view, defensible in principle.
My son often asks whether all offenders are caught in real life, because that is how it looks in the movies. I tell him that not every wrongdoer is apprehended, nor is every wrongdoer punished, and that is the limit of law. Does that justify extracting confessions through torture to catch all the bad guys? There was a case in Germany where a kidnapper was already in custody, and if the hostage could only be located by resorting to torture, what would you choose? The concern in law is the steady lowering of thresholds—the slippery slope by which torture becomes permissible.
Many times, the deeper one studies law, the clearer it becomes that there are no standard answers. I write about many cases in my book, and they likewise resist definitive resolution. Consider the blacklisting of entertainers with “tainted” records: from my perspective, it is wrong. Critics reply that I am whitewashing celebrities because they cannot tolerate moral blemishes in public figures. Often, the real difficulty lies in choosing among competing conceptions.
Scholar: In a preface you wrote, you said that compared with Professor Luo Xiang and Professor Chen Bi, your writing may have fewer quotable lines that go viral. In one essay, you cite the jurist Philipp Heck as saying that we should “move carefully and calmly back and forth between rules and values, reconciling them.” How do you understand this statement? [We can’t find that sentence as a verbatim line in either English or German. It appears to be a Chinese paraphrase of Philipp Heck’s ideas, especially his notion of the judge as the legislator’s assistant. —Translators’ note.]
Zhao Hong: Philipp Heck means that law undoubtedly embodies value commitments, yet value cannot be equated with law itself. Law should be consonant with morality, but it is not identical to morality. The task of law is to use technical interpretation and method so that, in application, doctrine develops toward outcomes that are broadly acceptable as good. Observance of legal rules must not defeat the law’s pursuit of the good; otherwise law is hollowed out.
Take the case of a boy who ran onto the pitch to hug Lionel Messi and was placed under administrative detention. Public opinion is split. Some argued that the act was harmless, just a burst of youthful enthusiasm, so detention was unnecessary. The other warns that not detaining him would invite copycats: if anyone can rush the field to hug a player, how can a match continue, and how is player safety protected? In legal terms, the divide reflects two orientations: is liberty paramount, or is order?
Both orientations matter; the task is to reason in legal terms. The starting point is respect for the law. Article 24 of the Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security sets out the circumstances under which disrupting a sporting event may lead to detention. Its third category, however, ends with the phrase “and other acts,” a catch-all clause for conduct not explicitly listed. When interpreting this clause, the conduct’s social harmfulness must correspond to the specific acts enumerated earlier; only then does detention apply. Otherwise, a fine should suffice.
The specifically listed grounds for detention include, first, throwing odds and ends at players or coaches on the field so as to threaten or cause injury, and second, rushing the field to display slogans or streamers. Did the boy’s hug warrant detention? In the case at hand, he did neither of the listed acts. He ran on during a stoppage in play, for little more than a minute, without causing a complete interruption of the match. Legally, the social harmfulness does not rise to the same level and does not match the listed categories triggering detention. In my opinion, a fine should have sufficed.
In such situations, the task is not to rank liberty over order or vice versa, but to ask how a reasonable interpretation can realise the values at stake. Debating detention in the abstract, without returning to the statutory text, is unsound. As Heck stresses, a legal professional should hold substantive values yet respect rules and return to the rules, giving effect to the values behind the law through careful interpretation.
Finding a Certain Direction Amid Uncertainty
Scholar: How do you view the sense of powerlessness that some law students and legal professionals feel?
Zhao Hong: Hurdles to the rule of law are many, but it is still worth doing whatever can be done, even if indirectly. Efforts are constrained, but history moves at uneven speeds; progress may fall short of expectations, yet it should not be written off. Society has advanced beyond the point of returning to nothingness, just as today’s young people cannot go back to a world without the internet.
Scholar: Do you think that winners of the age have a greater duty to speak up and participate in public life?
Zhao Hong: I do not think anyone should be forced to act or take a public stance. Everyone has their own circumstances and considerations. The older one gets, the more complex their background and the more considerations they carry. That said, as a legal professional, once you realise you may have benefited from the times, you should indeed also reflect on your social responsibilities. For me, much of my motivation and sense of duty to engage in public life comes from press people. They taught me that when a professional has a channel to speak up, the obligation to participate is greater.
Scholar: Perhaps young people’s views have changed significantly, including stronger rights consciousness, so their tolerance threshold is lower than in your time.
Zhao Hong: My son is nothing like me. He is unwilling to put in one hundred per cent, and at first, that frustrated me. Looking back, I insisted on perfect scores and spent endless time drilling for precision, sacrificing many possibilities for a broader life. He may not become a university teacher like me, but I think he will have a happy life.
His sense of rights was unusually strong. As a child, I tended to accept things passively. The upside was resilience; the downside was low self-regard, so I had no grand career plans or ambitions in my career. In East Asia, under patriarchal norms, ambitious women are easily stigmatised. When I was young, those norms constrained and disciplined me: I was told not to compete with others and not to be too ambitious. Now, whenever I see my female students, I urge them to build strong careers—think boldly, push for opportunities, and don’t carry psychological burdens. I no longer see power as inherently bad. If I had greater professional ambition, perhaps I could have helped many more young women.
Scholar: Building the rule of law is a multi-generational endeavour. Do you have any words for the next generation?
Zhao Hong: Haha, I’m not yet old enough to step off the battlefield and start issuing exhortations, and I worry young people would find that “patronising” or “matronising.” I have no standing to set expectations or give advice. I hope that, in an uncertain era, each person can find a direction rather than be lost in uncertainty, not sink each day into confusion, nihilism, or pessimism, because life is pretty worth experiencing, even in hard times.
Beijing's online ID initiative ignites debate
Every Chinese citizen is assigned a national ID, an 18-digit identifier unique to each individual. This ID is used for various services such as opening bank accounts and purchasing train tickets, and, since the 2017 enactment of the Cybersecurity Law
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