Talk by Qiang Fu, University of British Columbia.
Friday, April 10, 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Bunche Hall 10383
Focusing on China’s procuratorial system, this study examines how procurators respond to recent constitutional and judicial reforms that formally aim to constrain prosecutorial authority. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with otherwise hard-to-access procurators and judges across multiple provinces and institutional settings, the article develops an interactionist framework to analyze the everyday practices through which prosecutorial power is reconfigured. Contrary to reformist expectations, the findings reveal a paradoxical process of institutional self-empowerment: rather than being weakened, procuratorates have consolidated and expanded their influence by rearticulating their jurisdictional boundaries. This process of judicial territoriality unfolds through the proactive incorporation of new domains of work, including plea leniency mechanisms, public interest litigation, and corporate compliance initiatives. Through these arenas, procuratorates extend their reach while maintaining alignment with shifting legal and political mandates.
Prof. Qiang Fu is the Co-Director of the Centre for Chinese Research housed within the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies at UBC Sociology. He has also served as Co-Lead of the “Big Data and Computational Social Science” Excellence Cluster at the University of British Columbia, and as a Board Member of the Canadian Sociological Association and the Canadian Population Society. His research interests include Chinese societies, social networks, and computational social science. He has published extensively in leading international journals such as American Journal of Epidemiology, American Journal of Sociology, Annals of Epidemiology, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, Justice Quarterly, Social Networks, and Sociological Methods & Research.
Discussant: Yutian An is an Assistant Professor at UCLA School of Law and teaches Criminal Law, Comparative Law, and Chinese Law. Her research lies at the intersection of criminal law, administrative law, and comparative law. Specifically, her research examines how legal systems structure state-building activities, sociopolitical legitimization, and administrative entrenchment in both authoritarian and democratic regimes, with a focus on criminal law institutions.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies