2 - Policies and Counterstrategies

Summary

Chapter 2 explores how local actors exploited legally sanctioned filiality to advance their perceived interests in court: Widowed mothers monopolized property of households legally headed by their grown-up sons; parents in difficult economic situations killed their small children to frame their creditors, with the understanding that imperial law assigned little weight to filicide; people resorted to false accusations of lack of filial piety to kickstart their cases or to incriminate their adversaries. The Qing state tolerated or even connived at such local manipulations, despite significant administrative costs and compromise of other established legal and moral principles, which enabled the state to co-opt local actors’ initiative to shape society and reinforce normative notions of parent–child relations.