The argumentation in this chapter is hampered by a lack of empirical research about the nuances of dispute processing involving adultery and divorce, and works mainly from previous research that largely overlooks out-of-court bargaining. For this reason, the findings of the chapter include many speculations couched in the forced diction of double negatives—for instance that divorce statistics do not prove that adultery is not important for obtaining a divorce. Even these somewhat ungainly assertions, however, will come to bear in the case study analysis of the fourth chapter.
In summary, in this chapter, I have hypothesized that the existence of criminal adultery is likely important even thought statistics indicate it is rarely used in courts. Criminal adultery can be used as leverage to pursue interests quite different from those that
98 余振華（註92），頁96。
justify its existence in legal doctrine (protection of the institutions of marriage and the family). Finally, the high evidentiary burden of criminal adultery combined with the professional judiciary’s attempts to limit the scope of the offense likely serve to
incentivize spouses and zhengxinshe to engage in extreme evidence collection methods.
Chapter Three:
Toward a History of Zhengxinshe as Affair Detectives
3.1 Introduction
Midway through my thesis research, a new zhengxinshe set up shop down the street from my apartment building on Hoping South Road, putting up a large (and garish) sign that read “New Start Zhengxinshe” (重新徵信社). While waiting on the corner, I would play the part of the ignorant foreign visitor and ask passersby, “Excuse me ma’am/sir, but that sign says zhengxinshe. I don’t know that Chinese word. What does it mean?” A common response to my question was along the lines that
zhengxinshe “look into people’s secrets for you,” and that “most often it is wives who
think something’s suspicious is going on with their husbands, so they have them go ‘get’
(抓) them.” This was not my experience when interacting with the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MEA). On two occasions speaking with MEA officials after applying for the release of government documents under Taiwan’s 2005 Freedom of Government Information Law (政府資訊公開法), I was greeted—half-heartedly rebuffed, really—with almost exactly the same line. The first was from a section director (科長) at the Economic Development Department of New Taipei City (新北市政府經濟發展局).
The second, was from a male officer from the MEA headquarters who had been sent to the MEA Archives (經濟部檔案大樓) in Jingmei (景美) to assist with my file request.
“I’m sorry, sir, but zhengxinye is not a so-called private detective industry (私家偵探業),”
they both said resolutely and with almost identical wording. The “false” notion that zhengxinshe are private investigators, they explained, was just a figment of the
irresponsible media’s imagination. The second man, however, graciously spent the next five hours reviewing and redacting internal documents about zhengxinshe. Many of these revealed just how long, hard, and futilely the MEA had worked to prevent zhengxinshe from acting as de facto private detectives, belying the man’s initial assertion. Halfway through the process, raising one eyebrow with some surprise, he remarked, “It looks like this industry went bad (變質) long before I realized.” I found fascinating and perplexing this glaring discrepancy between the perceptions of my neighbors on the street and those of bureaucratic functionaries in the belly of a major governmental agency, but I left the archives that day better equipped to explain it.
The purpose of this chapter is to add an element of historical depth to a thesis otherwise primarily concerned with intimate disputing behavior involving zhengxinshe in the present moment. One could indeed simply take as the subject of research zhengxinshe as affairs detectives without looking at history or problematizing the legal definition of zhengxinye. That is, more or less, the approach taken in Chapter Four, in which the role of zhengxinshe in specific intimate disputes in and out of courts will be examined. As the discrepancy mentioned in the above anecdotes suggests, however, there does exist a glaring gap between popular perceptions of what zhengxinshe are and do and what the government says they are and do. Again, one could simply relegate this discrepancy to inadequate regulatory oversight as do the aforementioned MEA officials and as does the CPU school of research. However, there are significant benefits to problematizing and exploring this gap from a historical perspective, and in particular because one of the goals of this thesis is to better understand the “edge of the law” (法律邊緣) that zhengxinshe seem to occupy. A brief investigation of when this gap emerged and under what circumstances will bring us closer to understanding the
legal gray space which affair detectives occupy today as well has help to untangle the complex and nuanced social visibility alluded to in the First Chapter.
It is difficult to trace the history of the “zhengxinshe-as-affair detectives”
phenomenon because of a lack of empirical research materials the further one goes back in time, and because it is a history with several moving parts, not all of which articulate in concert. We could break down the “zhengxinshe-as-affair detectives” phenomenon into at least three components: businesses called (and officially registered with the MEA’s Department of Commerce [商業司] as) zhengxinshe, businesses offering private detective-like services, and so-called affair detectives. Our primary interest lies in the overlap of these elements, but throughout their history they did not always align. Thus, a history of the “zhengxinshe-as-affair detectives” phenomenon must begin considerably before the phenomenon was visible or, perhaps, existed at all. This history of partial overlap, I will suggest, has ramifications for the meaning of zhengxinye’s social visibility through the present. As discussed in the introduction, many questions regarding the existence and behavior of zhengxinshe and the justness thereof may be reduced to the simplistic question of whether the industry is good or bad, which in turn turns on the question of good or bad for whom. Viewed from another angle, however, the historically contingent complexity of the social visibility of zhengxinye in effect functions to make these questions more difficult to answer or even pose. When the public is confronted with the multifarious image of an industry that at once supposedly engages in “economic zhengxin” and a laundry list of other investigative activities only some of which seem to impinge upon people’s intimate lives, the effect is a
naturalization of zhengxinshe’s role in “all-purpose” investigatory role in society, and relegation of illegality and criminality to the margins of the industry’s activity. Instead,
we should be cognizant of how the bending or breaking of the law in the concrete context of intimate disputes is likely built into zhengxinye.
Some aspects of the multi-pronged history are more accessible to the researcher than others. For instance, at any given time over the last four decades, it is easiest to determine how positive law defined and regulated—at least in principle—zhengxinye.
Newspaper reports starting in the early 1970s give us some insight into the activities of zhengxinshe providing “private-detective”-like services, and popular and government
reactions thereto. Most frustrating however, is that while some media sources and government files allude to the role of zhengxinshe-as-private detectives intervening in people’s intimate disputes as early as the 1970s and 1980s, these are often very vague.
It is not until the 1990s that affairs detectives in their current highly socially visible form begin to emerge. Thus it may be said that the emergence and development of the social visibility of zhengxinshe as private detectives and later as affairs detectives then, is a history longer and more complex than previously realized. While an important part of the phenomenon’s social visibility, signs in public places, are most probably lost to the sand of time, there are over a thousand newspaper articles about zhengxinshe in major newspapers such as the Liberty Times, United Daily News, and China Times from the 1970s to the present. These could be used to delineate a detailed history of the social visibility of the phenomenon, if not reveal just what role zhengxinshe played in intimate disputes at any one time. For the sake of expediency, however, this chapter will focus on and compare two points in time, the 1970s when the social visibility of zhengxinshe as private detectives first emerged, and the last decade or so once the current complex and varied social visible of zhengxinshe as affairs detectives had already solidified and become well established.
This chapter shall proceed as follows. First, we will identify the gap between zhengxinye in positive law in the present. Then, we will examine previous research,
which fails to identify why the gap emerged or when. Next, we will chart the
emergence of zhengxinshe-as-private detectives in the 1970s through an examination of regulations, revisions thereto, and a small number of newspaper articles. Finally, we will compare some aspects of the social visibility of those early decades with those of the more recent past and present.