The Law and the “Law”: Two Kinds of Legal Space in Late-Qing China

This article concerns the conceptualization and implementation of a new imaginary of law and geography in nineteenth-century China. In the first half of the nineteenth century, members of the statecraft (jingshi) school of thought adopted an idea of “law” that contrasted codified law with what they conceived of as natural socio-moral norms. That dichotomy explained for them the geographical contraction of Chinese society, the rise of Inner Asian dynasties, and the potential for China to expand once again. The Taiping war provided an opportunity for members of this group to put these ideas into practice by strategically suspending imperial law in favor of official activism in order to bring about more ideal social conditions. From the 1870s onward, this group worked to transform the Inner Asian territory of Xinjiang into a province. That process illustrates the contradictions in this statecraft conception of law.