| Nowadays, there is a tendency to treat the principal in Chinese criminal law as the perpetrator in German and Japanese criminal laws. However, the two concepts above have significant differences between each other in the criminal participation systems. To be more precisely, the German and Japanese criminal laws have distinguished the perpetrator and accomplice by the differential system, while the Chinese criminal law has adopted the unitary system to distinguish the principal and accessory offenders. On one hand, the direct perpetrator who commits the constitutive elements of the crime personally and a certain part of those accomplice perpetrators who commit the crime together in German and Japanese criminal laws, will probably be treated as accessory or even coerced offenders in Chinese criminal law. On the other hand, the indirect perpetrator in German and Japanese laws, who commits the crime indirectly, will be treated as a single offender in China and there will be no space for the existence of principal offender.It is a confusion of the differential system and the unitary system to distinguish perpetrator, organizer, abettor, and aider during the stage of conviction, but principal and accessory during the process of sentencing in China. Even though, adopting such a double differential system in China doesn’t mean the concept of principal equals that of perpetrator. This tendency roots in the belief that it is necessary to use the differential system to illustrate relevant concepts and regulations in Chinese criminal law to make up the shortcomings the unitary system brings. However, this belief not only violates the principal of legality, but also ignores the superiority of the unitary system of Chinese criminal law. The hidden danger of this tendency is to fundamentally deny the criminal participation system with Chinese characteristics. And this will result in the loss of superiority of the unitary system and complicate simple problems. |
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