Politics of passion: The trial of Shi Jianqiao and the rise of public sympathy in nineteen-thirties China

My dissertation examines the political significance of “sentiment” (qing) in nineteen-thirties China through a study of the trial of Shi Jianqiao, a woman who assassinated warlord Sun Chuanfang to avenge her father's death. By examining this highly sensational case, it demonstrates how a single act of virtuous female passion gave rise to the unprecedented moral and political authority of “public sympathy” (tongqing ). In imperial China, exemplary women often served as symbols of certain human sentiments that were thought to take moral precedent over imperial law. What my dissertation shows is that such virtuous emotions, often embodied by women, not only continued to exert political influence in the twentieth-century, but also assumed an unprecedented collective form. “Public sympathy” represented a new “public” based not on an ideal of modern rationality but on a long-standing premise of the moral authenticity of emotions and arose not through critical discussions in coffeehouses and salons, but through the consumption of media sensation surrounding dramatic court trials featuring passionate women. This public emotion was not only gendered, but also politicized. In a period when much of China was attempting to leave a preceding warlord era of lawlessness behind, public sympathy for the vigilante female assassin cast serious doubt upon both the reforming judicial system and the centralizing state's attempts to achieve national control. My dissertation not only touches on the question of China's modern “public,” but also sheds light on the less familiar issues of the political significance of emotions, the impact of media sensation on state and society relations, the contest over modern judicial reform, and the cultural exploration of warlord violence in a post-warlord decade. The rise of a sympathy-based “public” had implications beyond the thirties, serving as a key antecedent to the notion of the “sentiment of the revolutionary masses,” a force that proved so tragically powerful in post-1949 politics.