| Article 388 of the 1997 China's Criminal Law provides that "any State functionary who, by taking advantage of his own powers or position, secures illegitimate benefits for an entrusting person through another functionary's performance of his duties and extorts from the entrusting persons or accepts the entrusting person's money or property shall be regarded as guilty of acceptance of bribes and punished for it". Hot controversies exit in the academic studies and practical applications of this Article. Therefore, if, on the basis of detailed scrutiny and research, we can distill reasonable proposals which could guide the judicial practices, these efforts surely will be of remarkable theoretical and practical significance.This thesis intends to take a thorough expatiation, based upon the existing academic studies, of the concerned issues of middleman bribery crimes. The focus, however, to some extent will be on the study of the objective aspect of the middleman bribery crimes. Besides, we will also discuss the relations between the middleman bribery crimes and ordinary bribery crimes, the definitions of legitimate and illegitimate benefits as well as understanding of how is "taking advantage of one's own powers or position".This thesis consists of three parts in addition to the Conclusion, totaling 32,000 words including 3,000 in footnotes.Part I is a brief introduction and analysis of the legislation against middleman bribery crimes, based upon which we discussed the debate upon whether the crime under Article 388 of China's Criminal Law can be treated as an independent crime and what a crime name it shall be designated. In this thesis we would argue that it is in line with the criminology theories that middleman bribery crime be treated independently, as it is supposed to be, and therefore to call it "Middleman Bribery" is accordingly suitable.In Part II we will mainly discuss how is "taking advantage of one's own powers or position". In this thesis, we will define this phrase as (1) the bribee taking advantage of other State functionary's powers and position rather than of his/her own directly and (2) the positions of the bribee and such other State functionary are not restricting to on another. This crime condition of "taking advantage of one's own powers or position" will contain three aspects. First, the power and potion of the bribee will only affect rather than compel such other State functionary to initiate certain behaviors. Second, accordingly, such other State functionary is relatively mentally free in deciding what to do upon the bribee's request. Third, no adverse effect would and could occur to such other State functionary if it he/she fails to behave as the bribee wishes. This thesis further discusses certain non-crime activities which are likely to be confusing, including retired persons taking advantage of his/her original position and one taking advantage of his/her working, kindred or friendship relations with others.Part III mainly deals with the crime condition of "securing illegitimate benefits for the entrusting person". This Part begins with defining the scope of the "illegitimate benefits", holding that the illegitimate benefits in middleman bribery crimes shall be cognized through the perspective of legitimacy of the means adopted by the bribee or such other State functionary in collecting benefits rather than legitimacy of the briber's bribing means or the bribee's extorting and accepting the entrusting person's money or property. Then in this Part we point out that it is relatively appropriate to treat the crime condition of "securing illegitimate benefits for the entrusting person" as a subject condition. In other words, the minimum standard for confirming middleman bribery crimes is the middleman's promise to secure illegitimate benefits for the entrusting person. Under this approach, whether the entrusting person eventually obtained such illegitimate benefits is no condition to the middleman's committing bribery. Finally, this Part...
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