It argues that, while current political orientations sharply influence the institutional culture in each of the areas surveyed, the difficulties encountered by the institutions of these regions are similar to those faced by comparable institutions in the West. The institutions in these regions run the gamut from normative-coercive to renumerative-coercive. Neither the PRC nor Taiwan have abandoned the traditional house of refuge concept: reformatories are large, politically visible, and prison-like (although the work-study school may evolve into a practical institutional alternative on the mainland). In both Taiwan and the PRC, conventional wisdom, which calls for the segregation of delinquents by age and gender, is not uniformly implemented. The appeal to collectivist education and manual labor in mainland reformatories, the overt use of militarized rituals and symbols in both Taiwan and the PRC, and the reliance upon British procedures and policies in Hong Kong reaffirm the degree to which each of the institutions reflect the prevailing official ideologies of the respective governments. 1 table and 16 references. (Author abstract modified)