Judicial Application Dilemmas and Normative Pathways Following the Criminalization of Self-Money Laundering—An Empirical Study Based on 175 Judicial Decisions

The 2021 Criminal Law Amendment (XI) abolished the elements of “knowingly” and “assisting” from the crime of money laundering, formally incorporating self-money laundering into the scope of criminal regulation. This has marked a historic shift in China’s anti-money laundering criminal legislation, from a “single-track system” targeting only third-party money laundering to a “dual-track system” covering both self- and third-party money laundering. In 2024, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly issued the Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Money Laundering, which further refined the identification criteria and sentencing rules for self-money laundering, and provided normative guidance for judicial practice. However, approximately four years after the criminalization of self-money laundering, judicial practice still faces prominent dilemmas, including ambiguous factual determination, imbalanced sentencing discretion and confusion in the disposal of concurrent offenses, which hinder the effective implementation of China’s anti-money laundering criminal policy. To systematically evaluate the judicial effect of self-money laundering criminalization and solve these practical problems, this empirical study analyzes 175 first-instance judgments on money laundering crimes published on China Judgments Online from March 2021 to December 2024. By adopting empirical methods including descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, chi-square tests, one-way ANOVA, multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression, this study constructs a comprehensive analytical framework: Research Design → Sample Characteristics → Empirical Testing → Problem Identification → Normative Proposals. The key findings are as follows: (1) The legislative effect of self-money laundering criminalization has initially emerged. The number of money laundering cases has increased year by year, and the proportion of self-money laundering cases has risen steadily from 25.71% in 2022 to 33.96% in 2024, reflecting the continuous improvement of judicial authorities’ prosecutorial and adjudicative capabilities. (2) There are statistically significant differences in judicial sentencing between self- and third-party money laundering: self-money laundering cases incur significantly longer principal penalties (32.03 months vs. 20.68 months; t=2.3466, p=0.0201) and a much lower suspended sentence application rate (10.26% vs. 47.06%; χ²=15.764, p 0.05), indicating overall consistency in judicial application of money laundering crimes. Nevertheless, three core challenges remain in judicial practice: First, in factual determination, courts often simplify the evaluation of the subjective intent of concealment and disguise, the boundary between self-money laundering conduct and the act of the predicate offense is ambiguous, and the distinction standards between money laundering and the crime of concealing or disguising criminal proceeds are not unified. Second, in sentencing discretion, individual cases have the problem of sentencing inversion, the discretion range of fines is excessively large, and there is a lack of quantitative criteria for suspended sentence application. Third, in the disposal of concurrent offenses, the applicable standards are not unified, and there are divergent practices in handling self-money laundering in joint crimes. These dilemmas arise from the interaction of multiple factors, including overly principled legislative provisions, theoretical cognitive divergences between academia and practice, and insufficient professional capacity of judicial organs in handling financial crimes. Accordingly, this paper proposes a systematic and operable normative path from five dimensions: strengthening theoretical foundations, refining factual determination rules, establishing a standardized sentencing system, unifying the disposal principles of concurrent offenses, and improving judicial application support mechanisms. The research aims to advance the standardized and unified judicial application of self-money laundering provisions, and provide empirical evidence and theoretical support for the improvement of China’s anti-money laundering criminal legal system.