This chapter focuses on the legal ramifications of the rendition of Taiping Lieutenant Hou Yutian (mistakenly identified as Mo Wang) by the Hong Kong government to the Canton administration in 1865. This case was the first to reveal the tension between the Treaty of Tianjin (1858) and colonial law regarding fugitive rendition. The strong reaction of the British public to the execution of Hou by “lingering death” led to Britain’s amendment of its fugitive rendition procedure under the Treaty of Tianjin. The British government henceforth no longer considered “political offenses” as an extraditable crime to China and stipulated that no prisoner could be surrendered without a guarantee by the Chinese government of a “fair trial” and a pledge not to use any torture. While the Qing government accepted the amendment as an act of expediency, the British Foreign Office interpreted it as an acquiescence to British rules of extradition and the Political Offense Exception (POE).

This chapter introduces the key research questions of the book and outlines a theoretical framework for studying political crimes as a comparative concept. It highlights the significance of understanding political crimes as a transborder phenomenon and argues that the Qing state confronted serious challenges from the mid nineteenth century onward in handing fugitive renditions, as they became regulated by treaties whose implementation was often subject to the discretion of foreign diplomats, colonial officials, and municipal councils.

This chapter explores the relationship between the sharp rise in banditry, rebellion, and mixed crimes along the Qing Empire’s southern borders in the mid 1880s, and the responses of local administrators in Hong Kong and Canton to the challenges of extraditing fugitives. It traces the concurrent emergence of two contrasting discourses on justice: one framing justice as a system of legal protections against Qing law (prevalent across the Canton–Hong Kong border and increasingly within foreign concessions in treaty ports), and another asserting that foreign interference undermined the traditional justice system (notably along the Yangzi River and in missionary enclaves). This chapter argues that both discourses were strategically adopted by anti-Qing rebellions in the 1890s.

This chapter examines the Chinese government’s approach to political crimes and extradition procedures from the treaty ports during the first two decades of the Republic in the 1910s–1920s. It seeks to understand how the ideas of extradition and the POE changed in this period as a result of both domestic and global political processes: the growth of nationalism and communism, the strengthening and consolidation of the political parties, the increased professionalization of Chinese lawyers and judges, and the emergence of critical voices among foreign powers on the institution of extraterritoriality. The chapter presents a legal and transnational view of the Chinese Revolution in the first two decades of the Republic, illuminating the profound impact of extraterritoriality and changing extradition rules on China’s political trajectory.

How did the Gestapo enforce laws governing criticism? Recent historiography highlights denunciation driven policing as well as the overrepresentation of Communists and Jews in cases taken to trial. A system of selective enforcement is well-established fact, but the dynamics remain unclear. Enemies of the People randomly samples two categories of “criminal opinion” to capture the changing decision-making processes behind routine investigation, interrogation, and enforcement practices. Five arguments take shape. First, a conscious policy of selective enforcement based on political reliability as defined by standing within the Nazi people’s community. Second, the system punished subversive motive rather than actions. Third, political police viewed targeted minorities as subversives, privileged minorities as supporters, and carefully investigated “politically colourless” Germans. Fourth, from 1935 to 1944, the Gestapo behaved as an ordinary detective service when investigating individual Germans. Fifth, selective enforcement involved state prosecutors and the Party through five configurations. The violence of revolution and collapse were bookends on a decade of much cooler suppression.