Recently, the Ningbo Municipal Committee of the China Democratic Progressive Party approved the renaming of the second branch of education in Yuyao City of the People's Progressive Party to the Yuyao City Of the People's Progressive Party. Naming the grassroots branch of the Democratic Progressive Party after a celebrity is the first case in the country. The official listing of the Yuyao City Yao Branch of the China Democratic Progressive Party not only highlights the cultural heritage of the Yuyao Minjin, but also provides a historical education base for the in-depth excavation of the glorious deeds and contemporary social values of Yan Jingyao, a pioneer in Chinese criminology research and one of the founders of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy. As the person in charge of the most basic organization of the Dpp, I would like to write this article to commemorate yan Jingyao, the elder of the DPP and the sage of Yuyao Township.
Yan Jingyao is a famous sociologist and jurist in China, a pioneer in the study of chinese criminology, and an outstanding fighter for the democratic revolution. He was born on July 24, 1905 in Yanjia Natural Village, Muhu Village, Now Low Pond Subdistrict, although his family was poor, he was well-read and studious when he was a teenager. With the financial support of his aunt, he graduated from Shanghai Minzhu Middle School and was admitted to the Sociology Department of Yenching University with honors.
Feeling that China's society was turbulent and the crime phenomenon was serious at that time, and the academic community ignored the current situation of china's crime research, Yan Jingyao, during his university studies, clarified his future criminological research direction, and used the summer vacation to intern at the Beijing Normal First Prison near Taoranting, eating, living and working together, so that he could obtain first-hand research materials in an all-round way, and write a number of extremely valuable papers such as "Social Analysis of Crime in Beijing" and "China's Prison Problem".
In 1928, after graduating from Yenching University, Yan Jingyao stayed on to pursue graduate studies and concurrently served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Academia Sinica, he expanded the scope of criminological research to prison inmates and prison management in more than 20 cities across the country, collected more than 300 kinds of case data and a large number of charts, and copied relevant materials from prisons in 12 provinces across the country. His outstanding professional ability was appreciated by Yang Xingfo, then director general of the Academia Sinica, who sent him to represent the Chinese government at the Tenth International Prison Conference held in Czechoslovakia, and then visited France and Britain. In the meantime, he reflected and contrasted two very different social systems. In order to broaden his research horizons, in the summer of 1930, he accepted a scholarship to the United States from Yenching University, studied at the New York Institute of Social Service, and six months later majored in criminology at the University of Chicago. During the day, he also worked hard to learn professional knowledge, and often went to the workers' night school to learn Marxist-Leninist courses as well as Russian. At that time, he became acquainted with Ji Zhaoding and Xu Yongying, the heads of the Chinese Communist Party organization in the United States, and was influenced by progressive ideas to participate in the revolutionary activities of the Anti-Imperialist Grand Alliance (a peripheral organization of the Communist Party). These experiences laid a solid foundation for the formation of his future academic and progressive democratic ideas. In order to further do a good job in the research of Crime in China, he continued to study, and in 1934 he received a doctorate in criminology from the University of Chicago, and his doctoral dissertation "The Relationship between Crime Problems in China and Social Change" was not only the first work on crime and social change in modern China, but also reflected his highest achievements in the field of criminology, so he was recognized by the academic community as a pioneer and pioneer in the field of criminology research in modern China.
Yan Jingyao and Lei Jieqiong took a group photo
When Yan Jingyao taught the courses of criminology and social investigation at Yenching University, he attached great importance to linking theory with practice, guiding students to inherit the excellent qualities of applying the past and learning and practicing, so that students could go out of the school and go to the ordinary people living at the bottom in addition to learning book knowledge. Prisons, mines, coal kilns and other places can often see him and his students together to investigate and research, field research. He proposed that the drastic changes and turmoil in society were the root causes of crime, and attributed the crime problems in Chinese society at that time to the inevitable result of the failure of social restraint and social disintegration; social changes caused contradictions and conflicts between new and old legal views and moral norms; many people broke the law because they lost their direction, did not distinguish between right and wrong, and did not understand the law in the rapid social changes; and the lives of the people at the bottom were forced to commit crimes for their livelihood. At that time, he pointedly pointed out: "Anglo-American sociology is a reformism that heals the head of the head and the foot, and it is impossible to cure the root cause of the disease of Chinese society; to eliminate the shortcomings of Chinese society, to thoroughly solve a series of social problems such as crime, poverty, backwardness, and unemployment in China, it is necessary to change the social system, oppose fascism, oppose dictatorship, practice democracy, learn from the Soviet Union, and take the socialist road." "These views have proven to stand the test of history. After the 12.9 Movement, Yan Jingyao resolutely threw himself into and supported the students to participate in the Anti-Japanese Salvation Movement, but under the white terror, he was forced to leave the university podium and come to Shanghai. Due to his outstanding criminological research achievements, he was hired as the assistant warden of the West Prison of the Shanghai Public Concession Bureau, becoming the first Chinese to hold the highest position in the Western prison management system.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Yan Jingyao, while actively participating in the university's education management as an academic expert, actively participated in the school's education management, successively serving as the director of the Political Department of Yenching University, the acting dean of the Law School, and the professor of the Law Department of Peking University. After that, he participated in the preparation of the Beijing University of Political Science and Law (the predecessor of China University of Political Science and Law), from the school's hardware operation facilities to the internal professional discipline settings, the selection of teachers, etc., spending a lot of energy and effort. After the establishment of the college, he served as the director of the State Law Teaching and Research Office, and concurrently served as a member of the School Council, teaching the State Law of the USSR, the Bourgeois State Law, and the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In order to gain an in-depth understanding of how prisoners were reformed in New China, he personally visited Shanghai as a deputy to the National People's Congress to inspect Tilanqiao Prison (formerly known as the Shanghai Public Concession Ministry bureau prison where he worked) and the Shanghai Juvenile Correctional Facility. His "China's Prison Problem" provided practical and effective countermeasures for the governance of prison problems at that time, and many unique insights and suggestions can still be used as references today.
It is necessary to mention Yan Jingyao's wife here, Ms. Lei Jieqiong, who was the chairman of the Central Committee of the China Association for Promoting Democracy and vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, who is a famous sociologist, jurist, educator and outstanding social activist in China. She and Yan Jingyao met, knew each other, and became lifelong partners, and were close comrades-in-arms who had been like-minded for decades. Inspired by the lofty ambition of taking the national mission as their own responsibility, they actively participate in social activities seeking national progress, and they love and respect each other and encourage each other in their common causes and lives.
On December 16, 1988, the day before the establishment of the Yuyao branch of the Dpp, Vice Chairman Lei Jieqiong sent a congratulatory letter from Beijing; on May 12, 1993, she was invited to Yuyao to cut the ribbon for the opening of the Hemudu Ruins Museum, and that night she also met all the members of the Yuyao branch of the Minjin, and her approachable smile has always been engraved in the hearts of every Yuyao minjin who was interviewed at that time.
Yan Jingyao served as a standing director of the first to third council of the Central Committee of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy, a standing member of the Standing Committee of the Fourth and Fifth Central Committees of the China Association for the Promotion of Democracy, and a deputy to the first to third National People's Congress. In 1973, he was transferred to the Department of International Politics at Peking University to study international issues.
On January 12, 1976, Yan Jingyao died of cerebral hemorrhage in Beijing.
Yan Jingyao's life can be described as glorious, and the discipline of Chinese criminology that he founded unifies basic theoretical research and applied scientific research, with independent in-depth thinking and the innovative spirit of courage to explore. He boldly broke through the theoretical framework and model of the West, adopted the social anthropological field investigation method, constantly innovated theories, comprehensively considered various social problems and environmental factors that caused crime, and persevered for decades of fruitful research. His deeds of going deep into prison and eating and living with prisoners to obtain real materials have been admired by future generations. Yan Jingyao's down-to-earth, innovative, and critical academic spirit still plays a positive enlightening role in today's legal and political research. At the same time, he also set an example for future generations to love the country and the people, dedicate himself to education, and the spiritual legacy he left for the country and his hometown is precious and will be passed on for a long time.
Source: Yuyao News Network - Yuyao Daily