An Exploration On Criminalization Of Sexual Bribery

It is increasingly seen the downfall of high-ranking officials in recent years, andthe corruption and bribery cases investigated and prosecuted often have a commoncharacteristic, that the majority of corrupt officials are found invariably eitherreceiving or requesting for sexual favours, or have one or more fixed long-termmistresses. Among these corruption cases, those who have improper sexualrelationship with the corrupt officials have obtained the variety of benefits. Thesecontain both material and non-material benefits, such as job mobilization, promotion,construction project contract undertaking, co-bribery and so on. With the rapiddevelopment and the popularity of network, more and more sexual bribery scandalsare exposed by the media. The phenomenon of ‘sexual bribery’ rife amongst corruptChinese officials constantly causes more social problems, once again bringing thesexual bribery related issues into the spotlight and eventually become the focus ofpublic attention.A range of social problems caused by sexual bribery, having made it long been anunavoidable issue within legal academia. It has, admittedly, been a topical issue foryears regarding to the inclusion of sexual bribery in the country’s penal code. Andindeed it is faced with some legal obstacles: sexual bribe is more hidden than otherforms of bribes; difficult to be effectively regulated; and also hard to distinguishbetween voluntary sexual relationship and benefits-driven relationship and so on.Despite difficulties, the social harm caused by sexual bribery should not to be ignored;sexual bribery into the penalty will surely become a trend.By comparing the sex bribery and property bribery, we find that, on the one hand,in terms of legal interest protected by bribery law,, there is no substantive differencesbetween the legal interest infringement of sexual bribery and that of money bribery.On the other hand, the social hazard of sexual bribery is no less serious than propertybribery, for sexual bribery does not only have the social harmfulness as property bribery does, but also undermines social ethics. Furthermore, property bribe may playa role as very small lure to a part of officials, or even does not work at all, but sexualbribe is often able to produce a great temptation to them, which can not be achievedby property bribe. Finally, since ancient times, China’s rural areas have "learning lawsfrom officials " means grassroots administration officials also have to play the role ofjustice, and have the responsibility on edifying civilians. Therefore many Chinesedynasties have severe sanctions and penalties on sexual bribery prevention in order toset an example for the people to act through officials’ honest and upright conduct andcharacter. But the officials’ sexual scandal has enormous harm to the public ethicsand emotion, let alone being moral model to the common. The ‘good example’vanishes due to the current phenomenon of rampant sex bribe. Sexual bribery casesbecome widespread in recent years, making it necessary and urgent to bring sexualbribery into criminal law. Because of the absence of regulation of sexual bribery, boththe engaged bribee and bribers are immune from criminal prosecution and appropriatelegal punishment, but openly with impunity, whether such persons for sexual briberycase without any punishment would be rational and legitimate worth our furtherresearch and discussion..For the serious harmfulness of sexual bribery phenomenon, many extraterritorialcountries have corresponding legal provisions and penalties. Through conscientiouslystudying and summing up the developed extraterritorial legislation practices in termsof the sexual bribery criminal law, we are able to get a useful reference for bringingsexual bribery crime into the penalty. The current domestic scholars’ exploration onthis issue has offered more specific and feasible solutions in bringing sexual briberyinto the criminal law. Faced with the social problems caused by the prominentphenomenon of sexual bribery occurred in recent years, and the lack of legislation onsexual bribery, This paper aims to demonstrate the rationality of including sexualbribery in the criminal law and regulations. It provides a detailed argumentation fromthe angles including legal interests protection, social harmfulness and regulatoryfunctions of the criminal law and so on. It also probes into the summarisation and selection of both extraterritorial legislation and domestic scholars’ law measuresregarding to the inclusion of sexual bribery into criminal law，this paper endeavoursto explore an appropriate scenario on bringing sexual bribery into criminal law, whichis suitable to our national situation, while at the same time present a furtherclarification for the possible questions associated.