Week 13

• Sida Liu and Terence Halliday, “The Trial of Li Zhuang,” Chapter 6, Criminal Defense in China, 2015
• Stern and Hassid, “Amplifying Silence: Uncertainty and Control Parables in Contemporary China,” Comparative Political Studies 45, No. 10, 2012, pp.1230-54

cf. Ji Tianqin’s news article on lawyer mobilization for the Li ZHuang case

Control parables: “stories about transgression that counsel caution and restrict political possibilities” (1240) or “a type of didactic story that invent or recapitulate an understanding of why certain types of action are dangerous or even impossible.”

defining characteristics - speculative

key function - encourage risk taking or counsel retreat, help people navigate the gray zone between tolerated and forbidden.

Creators: often grassroots explanations but “ambiguous new regulations spawn control parables too” (1242)

Reasons for being rarely online? ”One reason that online control parables are rare, for example, is that the Chinese government closely scrutinizes the Internet and few are willing to discuss crackdowns in a space notorious for surveillance” (1244)

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