To ensure uniformity in the criminal law text,after the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress(NPC)passed the Amendment XI to the Criminal Law,the Communique of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress published the amended criminal law text for the first time.This text integrates effective separate criminal laws,decisions on amendments to the criminal law,and criminal law amendments from 1997 to the present into the criminal law.While amended criminal law texts are commonly seen in practice,such as those edited and published by publishers following the adoption of each criminal law amendment,it is the first time the Communique of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress published the latest amended criminal law text after the adoption of a criminal law amendment.This cannot be equated with the edited and published texts by the private sector.According to legislative background information,the NPC Standing Committee's unconventional move aims to ensure the uniformity of the criminal law text.The non-uniformity of the criminal law text is closely related to the way China amends its criminal law.Since the revision of the Criminal Law in 1997,China has adopted three methods for amending the criminal law:separate criminal laws,criminal law amendments,and decisions on amendments to the criminal law.These three methods have led to varying degrees of difficulty in maintaining a unified criminal law text.Firstly,as the most important method of amending the criminal law,criminal law amendments are formally independent of the criminal law and must be incorporated to clarify the currently effective criminal law provisions.Thus,amended criminal law texts based on various criminal law amendments have emerged and become more practical criminal law texts.Secondly,although separate criminal laws have been discontinued,the existing sole separate criminal law's amendment clauses are not independent of the criminal law but are similar to criminal law amendments,content-wise dependent on the criminal law but formally independent of it,which to some extent also spurred the creation of amended criminal law texts.Lastly,the existing sole decision on amendments to the criminal law has long remained outside the criminal law,altering its content without publishing the amended criminal law text according to legislative conventions.Despite the practical advantages of the amended criminal law texts,there are doubts about whether the currently published amended criminal law text can serve as a standard text and whether it can effectively unify the criminal law text.This is because it has not been voted on by the NPC or its Standing Committee,nor has it been signed by the President,and it is not the only definitive standard text.Unifying the criminal law text requires addressing two closely related issues:firstly,integrating the existing separate criminal laws,decisions on amendments,and criminal law amendments into the criminal law to end the current non-uniformity of the criminal law text;and secondly,choosing and improving the appropriate method for future amendments to ensure that subsequent amendments do not impede the uniformity of the criminal law text.
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