중국 형법 제9차 개정의 주요내용과 특징에 대한 고찰

The Amendment (Ⅸ) to the China Criminal Law, as adopted in the 16th Session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China on August 29, 2015, came into force on November 1, 2015. Since the 1997 revision of the Criminal Law, the Standing Committee of the National People’s congress has enacted One Decision and Eight Amendments to the Criminal Law that have revised and perfected the Criminal Law on the basis of the needs to punish crime, protect the people and maintain a normal social order. The standing Committee deliberated and passed the 52 articles Amendment (Ⅸ) to the Criminal Law, making considerable revisions and improvements to it. In the face of a grave and complex situation and the fight against terrorism in China, Amendment (Ⅸ) to the Criminal Law, imposed criminal sanctions against five types of terrorism and extremism. Furthermore, the revisions mainly involve abolishing capital punishment for nine crimes that rarely saw the sentence applied; improving legal regulations for punishing embezzlement and bribery, with a paragraph stipulating the applicability of life imprisonment and inapplicability of commutation or parole for a specific circumstance; imposing heavier punishments on cybercrime; strengthening protection of the minors, the elderly and women’s right making it a crime to disrupt courtroom order, organizing cheating in examinations, funding illegal assemblies, fabricating or purposefully disseminating false information; and repealing the crime of having paid sex with a girl under the age of 14, instead treating such an act as a case of rape in which stringency should be shown under the relevant stipulations of the Criminal Law.