Circulating the Code: Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China.

• Author: Son, Suyoung

Circulating the Code: Print Media and Legal Knowledge in Qing China. By TING ZHANG. Seattle: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS, 2020. Pp. xi + 252. $95 (cloth), $30 (paper).

Ting Zhang's book Circulating the Code weaves together the most recent advances in studies of print culture and legal history in examining a wide range of legal books printed in the Qing dynasty. The book's main focus is commercially published legal books and their effect on the dissemination of legal knowledge. The diverse range of commercial legal books, which included The Great Qing Code and popular legal handbooks, clearly demonstrates the emergence of nonofficial legal experts, the expansion of the readership, different purposes for using legal knowledge, various reading strategies, and multiple registers of language. Refuting the prevailing conception that the Qing state had a monopoly on legal knowledge, this book convincingly argues that the commercial legal books successfully transmitted legal knowledge not only to judicial officials and legal experts but also to ordinary people, and thereby significantly transformed Qing legal culture.

Based on extensive archival research that entailed a survey of 131 editions of the Code, sixty-five popular legal handbooks, fifteen manuals of community legal lectures, and many official handbooks. Zhang overturns several preconceptions concerning Chinese law and legal culture. The absence of systematic control over the legal publishing industry allowed the commercial book market to become dominant in the promulgating of legal knowledge through its timely dissemination of updated information. The wide circulation of commercial legal publications played a crucial role in the training of legal officials and advisors, the development of legal consciousness, and the evolution of judicial practice. The newly adopted format and content of the commercial legal books, which differed markedly from that of the authorized official editions, enhanced the accessibility and authority of commentaries and precedents. The heightened importance of interpretation, commentary, and case precedents contributed to shaping the Qing legal system as a hybrid system that, instead of being based on a pure statutory law, combined statutory laws and case precedents.

Zhang's study also redefines the meaning of the "Printing Revolution" and its impact on the Qing context. She finds the vibrancy of Qing commercial publishing, distinct from that of the Ming, in its increasing volume of circulation and ease of...