The Choice of Eight Offences – An Examination of Offence-based Exception to the Age of Criminal Responsibility in China

The United Nations expressed concerns in General Comment No. 24 (2019) on children’s rights in the child justice system about practices that ‘permit the use of a lower minimum age of criminal responsibility’ and advocated that States parties set just ‘one standardised age below which children cannot be held responsible in criminal law’. The Chinese law, nonetheless, while setting the age of criminal responsibility at 16, adopts a lower minimum age of criminal responsibility for certain offences. Particularly, children aged between 14 and 16 can be held criminally responsible for 8 offences: intentional homicide, intentional infliction of bodily harm, rape, robbery, drug trafficking, arson, explosion and poisoning. This article explores the current state of law in China and critically evaluates the rationale behind this approach of setting a lower age level for certain offences and then reviews options for reform of how Chinese law deals with the age of criminal.