Research On Some Problems Of Environmental Pollution Crime In China

Since its reform and opening-up, China has attracted a whole world’s attention for its rapid economic development. In the meantime, its environmental issues have become increasingly prominent. Particularly in recent years, a series of environmental pollution events such as air pollution, groundwater pollution, and soil pollution etc., have aroused great concerns about environmental protection. Chinese government has also attached great importance to the protection of environment recently. On the17th congress of CPC the "ecological civilization" was written down in the report for the first. On the18th congress of CPC the "ecological civilization" was taken into the China’s overall strategic layout, known as "five in one", for the first. In November2013, on the Third Plenary Session of18th Congress the "using the system to protect the ecological environment" was first proposed. All of these prove to a certain degree that crime on the environmental pollution shall be punished with heavy penalties. The severe blow has become an important part of building a "Beautiful China", which should continue to be push forward.The "Criminal Law Amendment (h) of People’s Republic of China" implemented since May1,2011and the "Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate interpretation of the law on a number of criminal cases applicable to environmental issues" Announced on June8,2013and implemented since June19,2013are the recent major progress achieved in our criminal legislation on environmental resources protection. But major and massive environmental pollution incidents are still emerging in China, which indicates there are still many shortcomings in legislation provisions on the environmental pollution crime. In order to make a better criminal law to punish the crime of environmental pollution and to protect environmental resources, referring to the domestic and oversea legislation and practice, this paper analyzes problems existing in the environmental pollution crime at this stage, and proposes appropriate measures to further improve the relevant legislation for pollution crime.This article is divided into four parts:The first part is an overview of environmental pollution crime. In this part we can get a better understanding of the basic ground of environmental pollution crime through the introduction of crime’s development course and statement on the involving concepts and features, which mean to pave the way for further discussing the crime.On the basis of cases, the second part analyzes some problems of environmental crimes in the juridical practice. It also moves forward to a study of questions of constitutive requirements, penalty application and the system of accusation of environmental crime. In the study, a wide range of views and multi-level analyses are involved in order to find inadequacies of the crime and the problems.In part three, there are brief introduction and analyses on some cases in the foreign legislation and practice, and they are summed for our reference.At last, the paper gives practical proposal to overcome the shortcomings of the judicial practice and to solve the legislative issues existing in the environmental pollution crime. In constitutive requirements, it is advocated that legal interest of environment should be object, potential damage should be added and intentional crimes should be confirmed in the subjective aspect. In terms of penalty application and the system of accusation of environmental crime, it is advocated to introduce the principle of strict liability, to raise the legal level of sentence, to add punishment methods, to perfect fine penalty and finally to refine the accusations.