Under the influence of religious extremism, terrorists in China have used crime and violence as a means of creating terror and spreading panic in order to achieve the goal of splitting China. While criminal law could be an effective instrument for fighting against terrorism, the essential characteristics of terrorism in China require a reconstruction of the criminal legal system around the Absichtsdelikte model by introducing terrorist motivation into the constitutive elements of terrorist crimes. This article argues that this rather innovative legislative model can help to align the crime with the punishment in the field of counter-terrorism legislation and would be helpful for crime prevention as well.

Introduction

In criminology, understanding and examining why people commit a crime is very important in the ongoing debate of how crime should be handled, reduced and prevented (Byrne, 2008; Caspi et al., 2006; Mackenzie, 2006; Wilconx and Cullen, 2018). In the conventional sense, while the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused’s reasons for committing a crime, motive in itself is not a core element of any given crime. However, this rule may not be applicable to a special category of crime – terrorist crime. Terrorism has not featured significantly in the criminology literature until recent years (Chermak and Gruenewald, 2015; Freilich and LaFree, 2016; LaFree et al., 2009; Schmid, 2013). Questions have arisen as to how to define terrorist activities in criminal law terms as a special offense and whether they can be distinguished from ordinary violent crimes as defined in criminal codes or by the common law. As most acts that constitute terrorism are also covered by criminal laws, some analysts have argued that terrorist motivation is the key to distinguishing between a terrorist crime and an ordinary violent crime (Buker, 2017; Cassese, 2006; Pi and Zhang, 2014). Overall, however, there appears to be a lack of research discussing whether motivation should be included as one of the constitutive elements of terrorist crimes from a criminological perspective. Although there is still no commonly accepted definition of terrorism, especially in an international context (Begorre-Bret, 2006; Cronin, 2003; Grozdanova, 2014; Hoffman, 2006; Hu, 2001; Schmid, 2013), terrorist crimes can generally be seen as criminal activities that exhibit the features of terrorism, i.e., the use of violence to attack civilian targets for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause (Blackbourn et al., 2013; Greene, 2014; Hoffman, 2006). It is important to highlight the motive element of terrorist crimes and that terrorist acts are both illegal by legislation and inherently immoral (Matusitz, 2013).