On The Abolishment Of The Death Penalty In China's Economic Crime Problems

With the development of market economy in China, economic crime has been formed as a new type of crimes. Death Penalty is the maximum penalty for economic crime in our country, which is fairly rare in the criminal law of any other countries in the world. Therefore, the theoretical debate of justification of death penalty for economy crime still remains on philosophical or ethical level and need to be gradually settled in China. In terms of criminal justice system at China's present stage, on the one hand, the increasing charges and structure of sentence discretion for economic crime haven't controlled and decreased the crimes, on the contrary, many factors such as the rising crime rate, amounts and methods have caused even more pressure on sentence discretion and judicial unfairness. On the other hand, due to the death penalty as maximum penalty, a great deal of corrupt officials fled to other countries to avoid the penalty, which caused huge loss of state assets and damaged the national interest. Furthermore, considering the issue of abolishment of death penalty appealed by international community and International Human Rights Organization, nowadays this penalty has been not only abolished by many countries, but also called to be abolished in the whole world. As a result, we should consider whether we could abolish death penalty for economic crime first and then for any other crimes step by step in China. From the point view of inherent culture traditions and present social situation in China, it is unrealistic and impossible to completely abolish the death penalty. However, with the development of politics, economy, culture as well as social ideology etc., and under the influence by the international social environment, it is still possible to accomplish the abolishment of death penalty for economic crime.