The Constituent Elements Of Piracy And Enlightenment To The Chinese Criminal Law

The 21st century is a period of rapid development of marine economy.General Secretary Xi Jinping’s major initiative to build the“Marine Silk Road "fully demonstrates China’s great importance to the development of marine economy.Piracy is a prominent problem in ocean transportation.Piracy is a great threat to the safety of maritime transport.In order to punish piracy effectively and ensure the safety of people and goods in maritime transport,our country should pay more attention to piracy.Firstly,this paper uses the literature analysis method,aiming at the historical development of piracy and piracy law,through collecting and reading a large number of documents,deeply analyses the historical development process from both vertical and horizontal aspects.On the basis of combing the history of piracy,this paper analyses the different attitudes and understanding of piracy in different historical periods,explores the concept and nature of piracy and the development trend of piracy to piracy crime,and exposes the harm of piracy to human beings.Secondly,comparative law is used to study,through comparing and drawing lessons from international treaties,to analyze the shortcomings and how to avoid such shortcomings in our legislation.The international community also attaches great importance to piracy.From the Nyon Agreement to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,the definition of piracy is stipulated.However,only the definition of piracy is stipulated in various international treaties,and there is no provision on how to punish piracy.The United Nations Security Council has repeatedly called on States to incorporate piracy into their legal systems.As a permanent member of the United Nations,our country should play an exemplary role in assuming international responsibility,but our country is in the legislative blank for the crime of piracy,which not only makes our country unable to fulfill international responsibility well,but also damages our international image.Therefore,the author thinks that our country needs to incorporate the crime of piracy into the Criminal Law.In view of the fact that the crime of piracy infringes on the safety of life and property of an unspecified majority,it is more appropriate to classify the crime into the chapter of the crime of endangering public security.In addition,a more important issue is how to convict and punish piracy,which is also the question of who will judge it.Based on the particularity of piracy criminals,that is,piracy cases have a strong foreign-related nature,China should give the maritime court criminal jurisdiction as a judicial organ to try piracy crimes.Many of the cases heard by the maritime court are foreign-related,so the staff of the maritime court can be competent for this work.In addition,our country also needs to set up a maritime law enforcement team with professional knowledge and technology,improve the efficiency of law enforcement against piracy crime,and improve the legal provisions on the right of boarding and the right of immediate pursuit in our country,so that piracy can be regulated.