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In this paper we use conflict theory to examine the effect of social status on legal punishment in China. We argue that unique features of Chinese society lead to complex and contradictory predictions about status effects on criminal sanctioning. On the one hand, the principle of “equality before the law” has not been central to the Chinese legal tradition. This feature of Chinese society implies that social status might be particularly effective for securing relatively lenient punishment from the courts. On the other hand, Chinese leaders have relied heavily on the exemplary behavior of models for social control. This practice conceivably could work to the disadvantage of high-status persons who have been convicted of a crime and thus have failed to live up to high expectations. Using inmates' self-report data from the city of Tianjin, we examine the effects of individual status and the status of one's friends on sentencing. Although the findings reveal few statistically significant effects, the general pattern of relationships suggests that the harshness of punishment is related positively to individual status and negatively to the status of friends.