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Article History

Received: 27 March 2024

Accepted: 18 October 2024

First Online: 15 November 2024

Competing interests

: The author declares no competing interests.

: Approval was obtained from the Social Sciences and Humanities Inter-divisional Research Ethics Committee of the University of Oxford (reference no: R66962/RE001) on 13th February 2020. This research complies with the procedures established by the University of Oxford for the ethical approval of all research involving human participants. The ethical approval permits the researcher to conduct interviews and collect and use secondary data. The research was conducted in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the British Society of Criminology’s Statement of Ethics for Researchers in the Field of Criminology and the British Sociological Association’s Statement of Ethical Practice.

: All participants were adults, and no vulnerable individuals were involved. Informed oral consent for participation, use of data, and publication was obtained from all interview participants before the interview started. Oral consent was used for two reasons: (1) the topic is sensitive, making it impractical to obtain written consent from participants, and (2) considering the cultural and political concerns in China, the existence of paper records could pose a risk to both the researcher and the participants. For the same reason, the oral consent itself was not recorded. Before the interview began, I read the information from my oral consent form aloud and asked if participants minded if I recorded the conversation and used the data for research and publication. Then I asked for oral consent verbally, by asking participants to state their name, agree to participate, and indicate whether or not they minded if the interview was recorded. The interview only commenced after oral consent had been given, and the conversation was recorded only if oral consent was provided. No payment or other incentives were offered in this research. Codes and randomly assigned pseudonyms were used to refer to participants to ensure anonymity. Informed consent to use the secondary data for publication in academic journals was also obtained from participants who provided me the data. Participants were fully informed about how their anonymity would be protected, the purpose of the research, how their data would be used, and any potential risks of participation.