| The two latest amendments to Chinese Criminal Law demonstrate that China's social life is increasingly influenced and regulated by criminal law. It seems that these amendments have been one-sidedly criticized by the academic community as instrumentalization and over-rapid expansion of the criminal law. They also criticize these amendments of violating the modesty principle. However, the foregoing criticisms are based on "the passive outlook on criminal legislation", which is supported by the "classical idea" of criminal law and fails to give an effective response to the current situation of Chinese society. Nowadays, the concept of criminal law is gradually developing toward functionism and criminal law is becoming closely interconnected with policies. The modesty principle does not oppose the establishment of certain number of new crimes in the criminal law. There is an internal relationship between early imposition of criminal penalty and the development of transitional Chinese society. In order to build China into a country under the rule of law, it is necessary to put penalties restricting or depriving citizens' personal rights into the scope of criminal judicial review. The establishment of "positive outlook on criminal legislation" has its social basis and is more compatible with the spirit of our times. In the future criminal legislation, China should consider a relatively large-scale criminalization, but avoid casually increasing the severity of penalties, improve the problem awareness and provide practical support in the legislative process, increase the visibility and perceptibility of illegality, offer reasonable response to the emotional appeal from the public, set up criminal procedures to deal with the large number of new-established misdemeanors, and make efforts to reduce the negative effect of crimes, so as to facilitate the social rehabilitation of criminals. |
京公网安备11010102006664号 京ICP备2023015853号