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　　中国被称为礼仪之邦，尊老爱幼是中华民族传统美德之一，古代先哲曾教导“老吾老，以及人之老；幼吾幼以及人之幼。”在我国法律制度上对于未成年人以及老年人犯罪规定从宽处理，便是这样精神的反映。对于未成年人犯罪，法律早已有规定，而对于老年人犯罪从宽处理，尽管在我国历史上存在这传统和习惯，但是直到《刑法修正案（八）》的出台，对老年人的体恤才真正上升为法律规定，这既符合我国尊老的传统美德，又能体现刑法的谦抑性。笔者对此略抒浅见，以求更加准确理解和把握该项法律规定。

　　一、关于老年人犯罪的法律历史背景

　　早在西周时期的法律就有老年人犯罪从宽处理的规定，历经各朝代到民国时期形成了较完备的制度。例如，春秋战国时期的《法经》减律就规定：“年60以上，小罪情减，大罪理减。”即犯罪人60岁以上，若犯轻罪，可以据情宽容；若犯重罪，则可按理论减。又如，1928年颁行、1935年修正的《中华民国刑法》第18条规定，“满80岁人之行为，得减其形。”民主革命时期根据地政权颁布的的一些刑事法律中，也规定了老年人犯罪从轻处罚的内容，在抗战时期，1939年《陕甘宁边区抗战时期惩治汉奸条例》第9条规定：犯该条例第2款各项之罪，年龄在80岁以上者可以减刑。随着社会文明的进步，现金诸多国家的法律对老年人犯罪均做相应从宽处理的规定。司法实践中，我国也有对高龄老人犯罪后酌情从宽处罚的判例。

　　目前，我国已经逐渐进入老龄化社会，未来老年人占人口比例将不断增加。因此，一部管理社会健康完备的刑事法律确实有必要建立有关老年人犯罪的司法制度，设置对老年人犯罪适当从宽处理的法律原则，并明确适用的条件、范围和程序。

　　二、关于老年人犯罪从宽处罚的规定

　　修正案（八）规定：已满75周岁的人故意犯罪，可以从轻或者减轻处罚；过失犯罪的，应当从轻或者减轻处罚。其实，对于上诉规定，《宽严相济意见》第21条作了规定，即“对于老年人犯罪，要充分考虑其犯罪的动机、目的、情节、后果以及悔罪表现等，并结合其人身危险性和再犯可能性，酌情从宽处罚。”司法先行，该意见作为一个正式的法律文件，首次明确规定对老年人犯罪酌情从宽处罚。是通过司法能动性来推动社会和谐的积极举措。需要说明的是，它并为突破当时的法律规定，其法律依据是刑法第61条关于量刑基本原则的规定，所以这次入法没有悬念，但是老年人的年龄界限，有的提出70周岁，有的提出80周岁。最终立法机关确定为75周岁，这是综合考虑了各种意见，也考虑了老年人的特点和我国社会发展的现实情况及社会公众的可接受程度。任何脱离国情的法律都是缺乏根植于社会基础的，法律既以颁布，再来探讨老年人的年龄界限已无济于事。此外，从宽处理的迟度。立法征求意见时，又提出一律从宽处理不会影响到社会的治安秩序，也有提出老年人虽身体衰弱，但社会阅历多、生活经验丰富，更应遵纪守法，一律从宽不妥。最终立法从犯罪主观方面来区分，即故意犯罪“可以”；过失犯罪“应当”从轻或减轻处罚。从轻或减轻的幅度应当根据修正后刑法第62条和63条执行。立法的这一规定较好地解决了是否一律从宽之规定。

　　需要注意的是，该条规定已满75周岁，应该理解为犯罪的时候已满75周岁，这里的“周岁”于刑法第17条未成年人周岁做相同理解，即按照公历的年、月、日计算，以周岁生日的次日算起。司法实践中，对行为人犯罪时的年龄是否已满75周岁，必须查证清楚，不然对行为人不能适用《刑法》第17条之一的规定。

　　三、关于老年人犯罪“免死”的规定。

　　有人提出，对于已满75岁的人，不适用死刑。这种想法是好的，但是缺乏对判处刑罚个罪情况的考虑。从现实情况来看，有的老年人体力、智力、精神状态良好，又以特别残忍的手段致人死亡，且社会影响极为恶劣，如不适用死刑，难以平息社会矛盾。故而，立法机关综合考虑后规定，在审判的时候已满75周岁的人，不适用死刑之后，增加了“但书”条款，即：以特别残忍手段致人死亡的除外，该“但书”指的故意犯罪自不待言，一般可指犯罪手段令人发指，如以肢解、残酷折磨、毁人容貌等特别残忍的手段致使被害人死亡。

　　修正案关于已满75周岁以上的人犯罪，一般不适用死刑的规定是新增加的内容，从此翻开我国刑法关于犯罪主体规定新的一页，使得老年人这一特殊群体与未成年人以及怀孕妇女一样受到“法律开恩”，彰显了社会和法律的文明。其实，我国历史上如同规定老年人犯罪可以从宽处罚一样，也有一定年龄以上可不负刑事责任豁免死罪的规定。如1928年颁行、1935年修正的《中华民国刑法》第60条规定：“满80岁人犯罪者，不得处死刑或无期徒刑。”另外，国际公约倡导和要求成员国应该在刑法中规定可以判处死刑或执行死刑的最高年龄，超过这一年龄不得判处或执行死刑。有的国家和地区已有明确规定。事实上，司法实务中也很少有75周岁以上的犯罪人被判处死刑。所以，这一规定意义非凡。

　　笔者认为，这里规定已满75周岁与修正案刑法第17条之一的“已满75周岁”不是同一内涵，《刑法》第49条第2款规定的是审判的时候，是诉讼法意义上的概念，即只要是审判的时候已满75周岁为必要条件。例如，一名65周岁的人杀人涉嫌犯死罪后外逃，10年后被抓获归案，其时年龄已满75周岁，依法对其不应适用死刑，除非已特别残忍手段致使被害人死亡的例外。而《刑法》第17条之一规定的必须是犯罪的时候已满75周岁。

　　（作者单位：陕西省镇巴县人民法院）


The SOE reform in China
Zhou Dayong
Summer semester 2003
Europa-University Viadrina,Germany

Abstract:
The essay tries to study the process of the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in China. Chinese economic reform resulted in significant influences on all social aspects, SOEs as an especially economic sector suffers a change both in internal management as well in the outside economic environment. I try to discuss in the essay, that the Chinese SOE reform has made large progress, however, SOE can’t conquer many problems by itself, the resolution of SOE lies in elimination of SOE by a further reform including property transition and construction of a fairer market.


Outline
1. History of the SOE reform in China
2. The main problems left in the reform
3. The reasons of SOE problem behind
4. Argue of some reform plans and suggestion
5. Conclusion


1. The history of the SOEs reform in China
1.1 the establishment of SOE
In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came into power in Mainland China. One goal of the CCP was to lead China into a modern socialism society. In economic scale, it meant mainly industrialization. According to CCP’s policy, the form of industrial organization must be based upon state owned enterprises. The state-owned industrial system was set up by two ways. One was the new enterprise after the liberation. At the end WWII, most industrial sectors in China, such as communication network, transportation and power industry were destroyed and had to be rebuilt, at the same time, military industries and financial sector e.g. banking system was directly nationalized from the former control of Gongmin Party. Another way was transformation from the private ownership to state-owned enterprises. The private properties were regulated under state management, in some cases, for instance in commercial scale, the former private enterprises were bought by local government gradually. Till 1952, about 83% of industrial companies were controlled by the state; a socialism economic system was announced established. (Fig 1)
1.2 The reform began from 1978
Until Chinese economic reform began in 1978, public ownership in forms of state-owned and collectivized were only legal ownership of property. In industrial sector, the enterprises were controlled respectively under central or local governments, the latter made decisions for the enterprises, the enterprises were not profit seeking economic entities, they were simply workshops to execute centrally set policies.
In 1970s, the discontent of economic situation accumulated constantly, because the defects of central planning system became obviously more and more. Around 1978, the rural reform took place from grass roots and spread quickly, till 1982, the collectivized people commune had to be abolished. In company with the reform, the free market in a certain degree was developed. At the same time, the problem of lack of autonomy in SOE, which led to low efficiency, was also taken into account. Therefore, from 1978 on, the Communist Party, under the leading of Deng Xiaoping, put hand to solve the SOE problem. From 1978 to 1984, the efforts of the reform concentrated on giving the SOEs more autonomy by allowing them increased authority over the allocation of their profits, and limited production autonomy. The rest profits could be used either to finance increased investments or to pay bonuses to employees. Besides, administrative control over SOEs was decentralized to local governments. But as the prices were still centrally determined and SOEs did not realize the cost of their fixed and working capital, the reforms did not improve much the resource allocation or the utilization of capital. (1)

1.3 Contract is the main form in the second phase.
From 1985 to 1992 was the second phase of the SOE reform. The policy named Zhenqi Fenkai (separating government from enterprises), the central government decided to turn SOEs into truly independent production and management entities, and stipulate that enterprises must take responsibilities for their own profits and losses by means of contracts and leasing. The common practice was: the enterprises sign a manage contract with the responsible authorities. Under the contract, enterprises were not only allowed to retain the extra profits after they had fulfilled the contracted quotas, but also allowed to arrange their own manage including dismiss or enroll personnel. By the end of 1987, about 80% of state-owned industrial enterprises adopted the contracts system. In 1991, over 90% of the previously contracted enterprises signed the second round of contracts. Meanwhile, based on the first round contract practice, the content of the contract was improved; the authority introduced more rational norms to examine the fulfillment of contract. A multiple index system was formed, which included economic efficiency index, development potentiality index and management index etc.
During this period, the practice of shareholding reform appeared as well. This new creature was adopted at first by village enterprises, which come from the former collective enterprises. The village enterprises were always short of capital, so they raised money from the village residents. Along with the reform moved forward from countryside to cities, the shareholding system was also introduced into SOE reform. Early in April 1984 Chinese reform committee organized a seminar to discuss the exploitation of shareholding in SOE reform. That conference drew a conclusion that shareholding system is a rational way to restructure the collective and state owned enterprises in cities. In July the same year, the first shareholding company after Chinese liberation—Beijing Tianqiao department store (shareholding) came onto horizon. Till 1991, there were already 709 state owned enterprises restructured along shareholding system. These enterprises included industrial sector companies, trade companies, also financial enterprises, construction enterprises etc.
Besides, in the second phase of SOE reform, tax system had also a great change. Instead of handing in profit, SOEs paid a certain portion of tax according to their revenue level. The State and local government collected tax separately; this measure was implemented to loose the relation between SOE and local authority.
However, during this period, the SOEs showed their weakness in competition with the new developed private companies, joint venture companies and township and village enterprises, because at one side, the manager of SOEs didn’t get use to do business in a free market, the attitude of waiting, relying on government and begging for help were widespread. At another side, the relationship between government and enterprises became more complicated, because, although under the contract system, the government have no right to interfere in the SOEs management, they still rely on each other: the government need the SOE to have good performance in order to settle surplus labor forces and continue to play a role in maintain the social stability, at the same time, to increase the government’s revenue to deal with the raising infrastructure investment and other expense. The SOE, on the other side, need the protection of the authority, in order to obtain more chance to get loans, subsidizes or orders in government arranged projects. Besides, even though most of direct subsidies form the state have been cancelled, many domestic savings were also channeled into SOEs, because banks had been directed to take up the role of making "loans" to SOEs instead of the state. The total of non-performing loans has grown so large that it started to endanger the banking system. (2)

1.4 The MES is the key point in the third phase of the reform and the achievements
Form 1993 on, the reform moved into the third phase, the aim called setting up the modern enterprises system (MES). The Third Plenary Session of the 14th Party Central Committee in November 1993 proposed: "It is the inevitable request for market economy to set up modern enterprise system, it is a direction of the SOE reform of China. "This indicates that SOE reform enters a new stage of system innovation. In 1994 the State Council determined to chose 100 state-run large and medium-sized enterprises to launch an experiment to implement restructure along MES. The basic demands of the experiment were to "define right and responsibility clearly, separate government function from enterprise management, and operate scientifically”. Those requirements were in fact the basic characters concerning modern enterprises system. Along the policy of building MES system, and based upon the development of the whole economy, there were many achievements reached in the third phase.
1) By 2000, most large and middle scale SOEs have set up modern enterprise system tentatively. According to the investigation in 2473 enterprises of State Statistics Bureau 2000, 2016 enterprises have restructured, account 81.5%. Among those enterprises, 603 turned to Co., Ltd., accounts for 29.9%; 713 were restructured to limited companies, accounts for 35.4%; the number of solely state-owned company is 700, accounts for 34.7%. As for their management, 82.2% established shareholders’ meeting, 95.1% established the board of directors, and the board of supervisors has been established in 84.5% of enterprises. Therefore, corporate governance structure has already taken shape in SOEs.
2) In this phase, during" the Ninth Five-Year Plan", China began to adjust the state-run economic layout strategically, The idea called Zhuada Fangxiao (to grab the big ones and let the small ones go). The reform for medium and large SOEs focused on fostering a batch of trans-regional, inter-trade, inter-ownership big SOE groups through reorganizing, transforming, uniting annex. In 1997, the number of national large-scale enterprise groups expands to 120. For instance, under approval by the State Council, China Petrochemical Corporation, China Oil and Natural Gas Corporation were predominated to two large groups, whose assets of enterprise group reached in 40 billion dollars, such measure improved the intensification degree and international competitiveness of Chinese petrochemical industry greatly. Another example was in telecommunication market, six major SOE telecom groups (China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China satellite communication, China railway communication) were predominated. So a new form of competition in field of communication service took shape.
By the end of 2001, national key enterprises add up to 2710, total assets up to 1,280,450 million dollar. Among 179 super-huge enterprise groups, whose business income is over 500 million dollar, there are 165 state-owned or state-holding enterprise groups.
3) During this phase, separating government function from enterprise management was strengthened harder than before. Chinese government started administrative organization structure reform in 1998. Through this administrative restructure, the departments of the State Council reduced from 40 to 29. At provincial level, government departments reduced from 55 on average to 40, about 20% departments were simply. Some departments were cancelled totally. The cancellation of government departments indicated that the SOE stay in the charge of specialized official department manages changed completely. Meanwhile, the administration rank of the state-owned enterprise were cancelled, some administrative approval procedure were simplified.
4) To relieve the social burden of SOEs, re-employment service center were set up to shunt the redundant staff of enterprises. It has been a great difficult problem of the SOE reform from begin on that enterprises are overstaffed. It is an important measure of revitalizing the SOEs to dismiss and distribute workers. In June 1998, the state council required all regions to set up re-employment service center system. National Ministry of Labor and Social Security emphasized that the laid-off worker in SOEs must 100% enter the re-employment service center. The re-employment service center determined to provide serve functions such as grant basic living cost, withhold social insurance, organize job training and launch employment etc. for laid-off worker. The fund, which used for ensuring laid-off worker's basic life and paying the social insurance premium, come from financial budget, enterprise as well as societies (namely form contribution or from laid-off worker themselves), each part bears 1/3 of the whole fund. The re-employment service center provides service for laid-off workers for at longest 3 years. When they can’t reemploy after this period, can still enjoy unemployment compensation or the society relieve according to relevant regulation.
In this reform stage, re-employment service center played a positive role on maintain social stability. From 1998 to the end of 2001, 25,500,000 laid-off workers emerged (Fig 3) in national state-owned enterprises, among them more than 17 million people were reemployed, more than 3 million people retired. However, re-employment service center was only a transitional institute, because the SOE had to still take responsibility to settle down those laid off workers. According to a new policy, all laid-off workers after 2001 are treat as unemployed and have to enter free labor force market.
5) In order to extricate SOE from predicament, especially to resolve the problem of high liability-asset ratio, by December 2000, 580 SOEs began to implement debt-to-share swap, that mean the enterprises’ debt were recalculated as share (enterprises’ equity), so that the interest burden of SOEs were lightened. In the process, most of unperformed loans would be calculated as shares, which would be gathered and supervised by a new state commission-- State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Till 2001, the total amount of money of debt-to-equity swap account 40,5 billion dollars, and the result was that the average asset-liability ratio of debt-to-share swapped enterprises dropped from more than 70% to under 50%.

2. The main problems left in the reform
After three steps reform, the SOE acquired more autonomy, as we have seen, the whole economic circumstance were also better. But because the reform did not touch the socialism idea from begin on, thus the transition of ownership of SOE was left basically unchanged, the defects of SOE could not changed completely. In the context of China’s economic reforms, there are still a few problems in SOE sector existed and have also a deep influence.
First of all, the interventions from the government still maintained influence in SOE. The administrative relation between enterprise and government is still remaining. Even the Local State Assets management office was established, it belong to the same bureaucratic system like former authorities. It can appoint or remove senior executives of SOEs. If enterprise applies to the broad structure, the directors in broad are appointed by it. The office has also a say in the transfer of holdings, corporate mergers, closures or other major changes to the enterprises, it is also charged with the tasks of clarifying property rights and settling disputes (3) . It seemed that the state assets supervisory takes the place of former authority above the SOEs. Moreover, the local government maintains still strong power in local enterprise, they rely on each other as we discussed above. So long as the enterprises are state-owned, whether they are big groups, stock companies or little entities, it is difficult to shaking off the directly or indirectly control from the government.
Secondly, because of the long tradition, enterprises are still taking responsibilities for their employees in pension, medical areas, therefore the so-called “soft budget constraint” cannot be given up completely. Although we have discussed that the Chinese government has managed to start re-employment plan, SOEs also take a part of the fund to support the plan. Correspondenly, government had to shoulder some failures resulted from the mismanagement of SOEs’ and avoid from their bankruptcy, in order to prevent the enterprise from bankrupcy and thus endanger the social stability.
Thirdly, the management of SOEs has low quality compare with other economic sectors. Though SOEs have produced an average 10% growth rate in the value of industrial output during the period 1978-98, this rate is considerably below the average of other sectors. The problem has two reasons. One of them is lacking of the inner incentive of the managers. The SOE managers are not entrepreneurs in the true sense, but bureaucrats at any rate. Their appointment by the government not basically according to their managerial capability, but based on their rankings in the bureaucratic hierarchy through the politic system. Another factor concerns the supervision within the SOE, it is also lacking in most cases. In practice, the position of supervisor in a enterprise is normally taken by staff within the enterprise and in most cases, the position of president of the supervision committee is taken by somebody within the enterprise, who is under the leadership of the directors and managers in his ranks both at work and in the Party. This system makes it very hard for the supervision committee to fully perform its authority (4) .
Fourth, the high liability-asset ratio is also regarded as a fatal problem of SOEs. It was observed, that during the reform period, the liability-asset ratio of industrial SOEs rose from around 11% in 1978 to approximately 65% in 1997. In as many as one-fourth of industrial SOEs, liabilities have even come to exceed assets; these enterprises are in fact insolvent. The World Bank suggests that in debt restructuring may be necessary for the most heavily indebted enterprises to bankrupt. After the implement of debt-to-share swap, the ratio decreased, but the debtor, in most cases are banks, didn’t collect the loan back, so it made the SOE even harder to get new loan for production. (5)
Furthermore, the whole process of the SOE reform companied by a serials of social problems, in compare to some difficulties such as lack or reserve labor force, ageing of the equipments, the most troublesome is the unemployment in large scales. In addition, in rural areas, millions of flowing population has been produced because of the bankruptcy and low profitability of the township and village enterprise. In urban China there are frequent reports about workers’ unrest. Although until now China still maintain a relative political stability, the menace will not fade away in a short time.