As the Republic of China (ROC) rose to power, it drew heavily on German and Japanese legal concepts to develop its new criminal code. Among the many concepts ROC reformers chose to adopt was the generalized notion of criminal intent common to all Western legal traditions. Some scholars of legal transplantation might attribute the ROC Criminal Code’s inclusion of intent to the ubiquity of similar concepts in other jurisdictions. I argue that the general concept of intent was not an inevitable addition to the new criminal code, exploring how it could have had negative effects on the ROC’s state-building agenda. To solve the theoretical puzzle of why the reformers chose to incorporate the general notion of intent despite its potential drawbacks, I analyze the use of three terms that refer to mental state in the criminal code. My analysis reveals that reformers incorporated the Western notion of intent to reorient society away from familial hierarchies and protect the interests of the state. This research reveals the underlying motivations of the ever-prevalent process of legal transplantation.
