p.18

I think the reluctance of Chinese governments to prosecute cases of violence perpetrated against lowerranking family members, including the presentday lax enforcement of laws and official norms prohibiting violence against women, as described in Gilmartin's paper in this volume, may be explained in the same way as the justification for violence against those who threaten the political or the class order. In all these cases, vertical violence is justified by the threats to the orthodox order posed by its opponents. Men are allowed to beat their wives, or mothersinlaw their daughtersinlaw, or parents their children, because the husbands or mothersinlaw or parents are representatives of the orthodox order, in the same way as dynasties conceived of themselves as having the Mandate of Heaven or the nineteenthcentury local gentry considered themselves as representing China and civilization against the longhaired semibarbarians of the Taiping Tianguo.