The Political Offense Exception (POE) became a key component of the revolutionary strategies of the 1890s, further complicating the implementation of extradition agreements between the Qing government and foreign powers. Chapter 5 reexamines the well-known episode of Sun Yat-sen’s “kidnapping” in London in the context of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Qing’s ongoing struggle with unequal terms of extradition. It argues that Sun’s self-representation as a liberal political offender was constructed through his trial by media in London, specifically to align with the prevailing standard of the POE. This became a strategy followed by southern insurrectionists during the last decade of the Qing Empire.

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 final chapter offers reflections on the implications of the book’s findings. It argues that the history of modern China’s struggle with extradition sheds an important light on the changing concept of “political crimes” as well as the Nationalist and Communist governments’ approaches to political crimes in the 1930s and beyond.