ПРАВО В КИТАЕ Yu Wenpei* ON THE DEFINITION OF CRIMES COMMITTED BY CHINESE MAFIA-STYLE CRIMINAL GANGS Abstract. <...> Crime committed by mafia-style criminal gangs is a new category of crime that introduced by the revised Criminal Law in 1997 in China. <...> Three types of “crimes committed by mafia-style criminal gangs” were mentioned in it, namely, crimes of organizing, leading and participating in the mafia-style criminal gangs, crimes of recruiting members of mafia-style criminal gangs by entering the border of China, and crimes of harboring and conniving the mafia-style criminal gangs. <...> To avoid confusion, it is important to research intensively about the definition of crimes committed by mafia-style criminal gangs, either for applying laws accurately in judicial practice, or for improving and perfecting relevant legislations in the filed of mafia-style criminal gangs. <...> This article makes a theoretical research and practical analysis on the definition of crimes committed by mafia-style criminal gangs, four aspects of features are discussed: organizational feature; economic feature; behavioral feature and feature of illegal control. <...> Borrowing this way of feature division, further analysis will make on Amendment (VIII) to the Criminal Law of China. <...> It will have significant and realistic meanings on the exact application of laws in judicial practice. <...> Keywords: crime, mafia, mafia-style criminal gangs, crimes committed by mafia-style criminal gangs, criminal group, organizational feature, economic feature, behavioral feature, feature of illegal control, judicial interpretation, legislative interpretation. <...> After 1978 of China’s reform and opening up, China underwent three phases of economic development, namely, a transition from a planned economy to a planned commercial economy, an implementation of a planned commercial economy and an implementation of socialist market economy. <...> The establishment of commercial economy also created conditions for the birth and growth of crimes committed by mafiaThis paper is the phasic achievement of National Social Science Fund Project (A Comparison of Anticorruption Legislation between China and Russia) of the year 2014. <...> Since 1980s when Hong Kong gangland’s recruitment of new members in Shenzhen was spotted in 1981, the mafia (-style criminal gangs) kept spreading and gradually developed into a non-negligible social organization. <...> Now they have connections and collusions in the underworld, commercial circles and circle of the officials. <...> The article <...>