I. Sources of Criminal Law.
Criminal law is a law that prescribes crimes and penalties, and is a general term for legal norms that stipulate which acts are crimes and what criminal penalties are given. The sources of criminal law refer to the manifestations of criminal law, including:
Penal Code (the name "Penal Code").
That is, the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China (1979 and 1997), which systematically and comprehensively stipulates crimes and punishments. Among them, the "Amendment to the Criminal Law" is a revision, supplement and improvement of the Criminal Code itself, and is also one of the contents of the Criminal Code. As of 2022, there are currently eleven amendments to the Criminal Law in China, and the Criminal Law Amendment (11) came into effect on March 1, 2021.
Separate criminal law. In addition to the Penal Code, the law of offences and penalties is established independently. The peculiarity of a separate criminal law is that it also stipulates crimes and punishments, but the content it stipulates only involves a certain aspect (such as a certain crime), unlike the criminal code, which systematically and comprehensively stipulates crimes and punishments.
After the adoption of the Criminal Law in 1997, the Criminal Code, the NPC created only a separate criminal law, namely the Decision on Punishing the Crimes of Fraudulent Purchase of Foreign Exchange, Evasion of Foreign Exchange and Illegal Trading of Foreign Exchange promulgated by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on December 29, 1998. The content of the separate criminal law is: the creation of the crime of fraudulent purchase of foreign exchange; Expand the subject of the crime of evasion of foreign exchange from state-owned units to all units in China; Illegal trading of foreign exchange is defined as the crime of illegal business operation. In addition, amendments to the Criminal Code are made in the form of the Amendment to the Criminal Code.
Ancillary Criminal Law. The nature of subsidiary criminal law as a whole is not criminal law, but it does contain a very small number of offences and penalties. That is, some provisions attached to non-criminal laws such as economic law and administrative law for the pursuit of criminal liability. There is no subsidiary criminal law in the strict sense of the word, because the subsidiary criminal law in our country is actually a reaffirmation of the content of the criminal code, and relying on the subsidiary criminal law alone cannot convict and sentence the perpetrator.
For example, Article 49 of the Product Quality Law stipulates that "the production and sale of products that do not meet the national and industry standards for the protection of human health and personal and property safety shall be ordered to stop production and sales, and the illegal production and sales of products shall be confiscated ......."where a crime is constituted, criminal responsibility is pursued in accordance with law. ”
Adaptations. Adaptations or supplements formulated by provincial-level people's congresses in ethnic autonomous areas, or in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions on the basis of the political, economic, and cultural characteristics of local ethnic groups and the basic principles of the Criminal Code, involving crimes and punishments, are also part of China's criminal law in the broad sense. This type of provision only applies to certain regions (e.g., Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan). In fact, the Criminal Law of Hong Kong, the Criminal Law of Macao, and the Criminal Law of Taiwan are also part of China's Criminal Law, but the content of the Criminal Code is different from that of the mainland.