Which participants in criminal offences are joint offenders prescribed in the General Provisions of the Chinese Criminal Law and how to create distinct categories (forms of participation) of joint offenders are two different questions. Although four forms of participation in a crime, namely as principal, accomplice, coerced accomplice and abettor, are provided for in the General Provisions of the Criminal Law, they should not be regarded as the categories of joint offenders. The criminal law theory should determine the forms of participation prescribed in the General Provisions of the Criminal Law on the basis of the principle of legality. Since the Specific Provisions of the Criminal Law provide for criminal offences committed by principals, only when the General Provisions of the Criminal Law provides that the act of abetting and aiding the commission of a certain crime constitutes a joint offence, can such act be punished in an expanding way. Otherwise, the punishment would contravene the principle of legality. Since the determination of joint principals does not take an act of constitutive element as the premise, the punishment of a joint principal as principal must be based on explicit stipulations of the General Provisions of the Criminal Law. The viewpoints holding that the prime perpetrator and the principal provided in Article 26 of the Criminal Law are in a crossing-cutting, progressive, or equivalence relationship, or in a double-layered differentiating system all have theoretical defects. Article 26 of the Criminal Law should be deemed as an article on joint principals that embodies the theory of “full responsibility for partial act”. For those who intentionally induce others to commit a crime, if they plays a major role in the joint crime, they should be considered as joint principals acting on a common plan and be sentenced as principals; if they play a secondary role in a joint crime, they should be considered as abettors and be sentenced as accomplices. Based on the substantive standard, those who play a secondary role in a joint crime can only be sentenced as accomplices. |