Abstract:  One of the major features of Amendment (XI) to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China is making targeted legislation on the harmful attributes of various criminal acts in collecting illegal debts. The crime of collecting illegal debts introduced in this revision has the following problems: lack of stereotyped classification of the crime behaviors, confusion in dealing with concurrent relationships with other crimes such as illegal detention, vague definition of illegal debt and conceptual overlapping with other judicial terms like trap loans in the crackdown on gang crimes. All these problems prevent the recognition of key elements and hinder the impunity mechanism. Based on the field characteristics of “collecting illegal debts through illegal means”, this paper clarifies the legal interests of protection against the crime of collecting illegal debts and the key elements constituting the crime from a substantive interpretation. In terms of crime congruence and cooperation, the crime of collecting illegal debts and other crimes like the crime of trespassing on other people’s residence constitute various relationships such as a complementary relationship, an alternative relationship or a combined complementary and alternative relationship. The regulation of collecting illegal debts is not only applicable to usury cases, but also to cases related to the crackdown on the gang crimes like fraud loans and soft violence.

Key words: collecting illegal debts, usury, behavior type, soft violence, illegal debts