On The Legislative Interpretation Of The Article30of The Criminal Law Of The People’s Republic Of China

Our country’s criminal law basically focused on natural person at first. Thecriminal law which amended in1997officially confirmed the unit crime with twokinds of legislative mode, including the general provisions and the specific provisions.But specifically, the unit crime can only be committed by the master in it due to theoperation of the unit can only rely on natural behavior. Traditional criminal lawtheory maintains that part of the crime’s subject must be natural person, such as theft,murder, trafficking in women and children and so on. Theorists call it pure naturalcrime, but with the social life enriching, the examples that pure natural crimecommitted by unit emerge. To identify whether this kind of behavior natural crime orunit crime became a problem, discuss between the theory and practice never stopped.Until April this year, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee issued onthe interpretation of Article30of the criminal law of People’s Republic of China, the“interpretation” discussed the meaning of Article30of the law and how to apply thelaw for the harmful behavior operated by the companies, enterprises, institutions,organizations, groups and so on which criminal responsibility is not available in thelaw. It specifically explained as follows:“The company, enterprises, institutions,agencies, organizations, and other units to implement the harmful behavior ruled inthe criminal law, and criminal law and other laws do not set criminal responsibility,the person who organized, planned and implemented behavior that harms societyshould hold criminal responsibility.”Until then, the issue was settled down. But in my opinion, the interpretation forthe Article30and31still has some problems. First of all, pure natural crimecommitted by unit is for unit’s benefit. Although the behavior was operated afterdiscussed by the members who have the decision-making power, it seems like purenatural crime committed by natural person but for the essence is still unit crime. Thisinterpretation identifies the nature person who organize, plan and implement thebehavior should carry the responsibility. In that way, we can say, it is totally in thecontrast to the essence of the unit crime. Second, from the point of view of economic crime, the amount of the crime involving a unit is usually great, which called “hugeamount” in the law. When we use the interpretation to identify the criminalresponsibility, this may obey the principle of suiting punishment to crime andcriminal responsibility because it can only apply for the natural person crime’spunishment measurement.Therefore, this paper considers several theories about the pure natural crimecommitted by unit and do the research on the above two questions. This whole papertries to find out the solution also considering the representative countries both in thecommon law system country and the civil law system country.