Despite the astounding level of public visibility that the zhengxinshe as extramarital affair detective has achieved in recent years, there has been very little research on the topic. Keyword searches of the National Central Library’s Index to Taiwan Periodical Literature System (台灣期刊論文索引系統) and the National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan (臺灣博碩士論文知識價值系統) yield only a handful of relevant research, perhaps five or six writings specifically about zhengxinshe and several dozen more that mention zhengxinshe tangentially.7 Most of the several dozen articles which mention zhengxinshe in passing are from law-related publications such as The Taiwan Law Review (月旦法學雜誌) or Taiwan Bar Journal (全國律師) and pertain to such topics as wiretapping, evidence law, and privacy rights. A cursory look at several of these articles reveals that they tend say little more about zhengxinshe than that they represent a threat to personal privacy. Among those writings specifically about zhengxinshe, about three or four are popular magazine articles in publications such as Jiating Yuekan (家庭月刊) and Youth Literary (幼獅文藝). These articles are longer than the frequent newspaper articles about affairs detectives, but offer little in terms of information or analysis that cannot be found in newspapers.
Two masters theses and two journal articles specifically about zhengxinshe represent the only scholarly research specifically about the industry to date. These include Cheng Shan-yin (鄭善印), Chen Jui-lin (陳瑞霖), and Tang Chi-liang’s (唐肇良) journal article “Souqing Disanren yu Zhengxinye zhi Yanjiu” (搜情第三人與徵信業之研究
),8another article by Tsai Pei-chie (蔡佩潔), “Zhengjian Woguo Zhentanye Guanli Fazhi
7The most recent search was conducted March 26, 2013. Not all of the items in the Index to Taiwan Periodical Literature System are keyword-searchable by full text.
8 鄭善印、陳瑞霖、唐肇良，搜情第三人與徵信業之研究，警政論叢，9期，頁249-296（2009年）。
zhi Yanjiu—yi Ribenfa wei Jiejing” (整建我國偵探業管理法制之研究--以日本法為借鏡),9 as well as two masters theses by Li Pei-tsi (李珮慈) and Chen Jui-lin (陳瑞霖) respectively titled, “Zhengxinye zhi Bijiao Yanjiu” (徵信業之比較研究)10 and “Zhengxinye Guanli zhi Yanjiu” (徵信業之比較研究)11. All of this research was conducted by graduate students or professors of the Central Police University (中央警察大學). While each author has his or her own focus and assertions, it is possible to identify a broad ideological orientation that is consistent throughout, and the authors reference one another’s work. For this reason I will at times refer to this research together as the CPU school of research or CPU research.
The CPU research focuses chiefly on the concerns of law and order and rule of law, something that should not surprise us given that university’s role as the premier academy for the training of law enforcement officers. The CPU research foregrounds the significant amount of criminal activity related to the zhengxinshe industry, and furthermore identifies the lack of regulatory oversight by government agencies. The authors tend to being and end with an assumption that conflates Taiwan’s zhengxinshe with America’s “private investigators,” Japan’s “private detectives” (探偵業, tanteigyō), and China’s “private investigators” (私家調查業, sijia diaochaye). As their overarching line of reasoning goes, the people of Taiwan, just like those of these other nations, have a need for investigative (and law enforcement) services that exceed the capacity of the state’s police and prosecutorial organs. Naturally, then, the free market provides these services in the form of a “private detective” industry, which in the case of Taiwan is called zhengxinye. Problems arise because the Taiwanese government is unwilling to properly acknowledge or regulate this industry a few bad apples (少數不肖業者) spoil the
9 蔡佩潔，整建我國偵探業管理法制之研究－以日本法為借鏡，中央警察大學學報，47期 ，頁
327-362（2010年）。
10 李珮慈，徵信業之比較研究，中央警察大學行政警察研究所碩士論文（2004年）。
11 陳瑞霖，我國徵信業管理之研究，中央警察大學警察政策研究所碩士論文（2008年）。
barrel, so to speak, with their criminal behavior. It is, then, either explicitly argued or strongly implied that if only Taiwan could follow the example of Japan, for instance, and adopt a law to “normalize” (整建)—that is explicitly acknowledge as legitimate and appropriately regulate—the zhengxinshe industry, much of this illegality and the
infringement of personal rights and liberties its actions beget would be ameliorated.
The CPU school of research is commendable in that for the first time it attempts to amass and characterize information about zhengxinshe in a more rigorous way than one would find in fragmentary media accounts. Furthermore, while these authors do not use the word “gap” in identifying the disjuncture between zhengxinye’s legal identity and actual activities, they have taken a significant first step toward understanding the legal gray space in which the industry operates simply by noting that it is not regulated, an important point usually lost on most journalist observers. Rather than attempting to theorize this gap and the legal liminality the industry produces or explore its historical origins, however, the authors’ law-and-order orientation seems to lead them to conflate Taiwan’s zhengxinye with the private detective industries of other countries in a way that obscures rather elucidates the particularities of the zhengxinshe phenomenon. As CPU school of research sees it, the problem is that the industry is unregulated, and the solution is to follow the example of other nations and regulate zhengxinye with a
“transplanted” law. These assertions are based largely on an aggregation of crime statistics and a normative discussion of the proper division of labor of investigation and evidence collecting work between state actors and the private sector. Yet, as the
research offers little by way of explanation of the role zhengxinshe play when they become involved in specific cases, one would be justified in suspecting that the authors’
calls for specific policy solutions are rather premature.
The CPU school of research does not discuss at length the particularities of extramarital affair investigations, a curious fact in light of Chen Jui-lin’s assertion that most of zhengxinshe’s business comes from extramarital affair investigation.12 This research not only lacks a gendered perspective, but also any analysis of zhuajian (抓姦), which represents in itself represents a uniquely Taiwanese phenomenon13 which we could hardly expect any foreign policy prescription of taking into account. Neither does the research focus on the details of particular disputes in which zhengxinshe are
involved. The approach of this thesis, then, is a marked departure from that of the CPU research. Simply put, our main concern is not with law and order and rule of law—with defining an appropriate normative framework for civilian investigative and law
enforcement work in Taiwan. Rather, we shall set our sights on the role that zhengxinshe play when they intervene in a particular kind of dispute, that involving
extramarital intimacy. The normative dimensions of the question of who should
conduct investigations and collect evidence in a particular society and by what methods and means are indeed important questions and we will ultimately engage with them, but not until the end of the thesis. Behind these normative questions lie deeper issues of justice that are best addressed not through reference to other countries’ “solutions”14 to problems, but rather through a close examination of empirical reality in Taiwan.
This thesis approaches “law” in a much different way than the CPU research.
Herein, law is not merely a set of rules meant to protect personal rights and freedoms
12 陳瑞霖（註11），頁99。 Based on interview data, Chen suggests that 60% of zhengxinshe business comes from extramarital affair investigations.
13Certainly the private detectives of other nations investigate affairs, but the logistics of and cultural scripts surrounding zhuajian are unlike those anywhere else. There is not even an English equivalent for the word zhuajian. These unique cultural scripts need to be parsed on Taiwanese terms, and the actual bearing they have on dispute processing and adjudication must be examined under a magnifying glass.
14It should be noted that when introducing the legal frameworks that countries like the United States, China, and Japan use to regulate their private investigator industries, the CPU authors do not adequately address the limitations of these policies. They seem to infer that these policies work, without considering the possibility that even in countries with such laws, private investigators may often break the law or infringe upon people’s privacy and other rights.
and uphold the social order that happen to be broken when zhengxinshe cross the line because other laws, regulations, fail keep the industry’s activities in check. Rather, in the sociology of law tradition, we will conceive of legal norms as enabling and limiting the behavior of the agentic parties to disputes. More specifically, law in this regard is something that people engaged in disputes, based on their consciousness of the law, use, avoid, or actively undermine to their various ends.15 Furthermore, our dual focus on the history of zhengxinshe as affairs detectives and intimate disputing in the present will allow us to destabilize the very notion of zhengxinye as an industry itself. In a certain sense, zhengxinye is not so much an industry per se as it is a liminal space of legality discursively constituted in a particular way with very real ramifications for how the parties to intimate disputes as well as law enforcement and the professional judiciary behave. Simply put, the goal of CPU research is to clarify and shore up the boundaries between legal and illegal and between private detective and police officer. Quite to the contrary, our goal is locate and examine the blurry line between lawful and criminal and between state and private, as to better understand its significance for people’s intimate lives.