On The Crime Of Impersonation

At the end of 2020,the newly issued Amendment(XI)to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China has added the crime of imposture,including three kinds of impostors’ behaviors:personating higher education qualification,civil servant recruitment qualification and the benefits of aftercare of obtaining employment.The overall research framework can be summarized as follows:Firstly,starting from the concept of impostor,this paper describes the phenomenon of impostors’behaviors and makes a brief classification.Secondly,the social harmfulness of impostors’ behaviors is analyzed from the aspect of crime quality and crime level.After that,the punishability of impersonation behavior will be demonstrated.Then,the paper analyzes the constitution of the crime of imposture.Finally,it discusses the judicial determination of the crime of imposture.The first part is about the definition of imposture.First of all,by comparing the similarities and differences between imposture and the behavior of using others’ name,we conclude that the behavior of using others’ name in the broad sense is basically equal to substituting one’s identity,which refers to the act of stealing people’s identities to do things,while the imposture in the narrow sense refers to the act of taking up others’ specific qualification.Secondly,clarifying the relationship between impersonating the identity of others and usurping the name of others,we confirm that the first type includes the second type.Then,the author analyzes that the impostor’s qualification should be non-transferable and have complete personal dependence,and distinguishes the impostor’s behaviors in criminal law from that in daily life.Then,we analyze the reasons of the imposture as a social phenomenon and try to find the reasons for its long existence.Finally,in order to facilitate the discussion in the following part,impostors’ behaviors are classified according to such standards as punishability and mutual consent,so as to highlight the different characteristics of different types of impostors’ behaviors.The second part is about the demonstration on the punishability of impostor’s behaviors.First of all,the impostors’ behaviors have serious social harmfulness from the perspective of crime.The act of imposture is condemned not only on the moral level,but also denied on the legal level.In other words,impostors’ behaviors both violates other laws and faces negative evaluation in the criminal field.Even before the crime of imposture was added in the Amendment to Criminal Law(XI),imposture also existed in other criminal acts regulated by criminal law.For example,imposture in the form of means often exists in fraud related crimes.In addition,the separation of impostors’ behaviors into stealing people’s names and usurping people’s appointment helps to understand the specific focus on the social harmfulness of impostors’ behaviors.At the same time,we also analyze the criminal punishability of imposture,such as obtaining the qualification of employment in public institutions illegally.Then,it is proved that impostors’ behaviors have serious social harmfulness from the level of crime.Comparing three different kinds of imposture mentioned above to the behavior of crime of substituting for examination,crime of cheating and lying and crime of cheating and lying by pretend a soldier,we conclude that the severity of first three kinds of impostors’ behaviors are no less than the later three ones.Finally,from the perspective of the quality and quantity of the crime,the author demonstrates that impostors’ behaviors seriously infringes so many legally protected interests including property rights.The third part analyzes the constitution of the crime of impostors.The content of the constituent elements of the crime of imposture includes using others’ identity,stealing others’ higher education qualification,civil servant recruitment qualification,employment and placement treatment.The crime of imposture is constituted by intention,which requires the purpose of illegally replacing and occupying the specific qualifications of others.In addition,the relationship between imposture crime and other related crimes is also analyzed.The fourth part is about the judicial determination of imposture crime.We discuss the preparation,the attempt,the completion and the suspension of the crime of imposture.After that we discuss the joint offense of imposture,such as instigator,accessory and executor.