Ma Kechang

Born in August 1926 in Xihua City of Henan Province;

Graduated from the Law Department of Wuhan University in 1950; and later joined the graduate class of the Law Department of Renmin University of China to specialize in the study of Criminal Law under the guidance of the former Soviet Union penologist Professor Bestrova;

Became a teacher at Wuhan University in 1952;

Passed away in Wuhan in June 2011.

Ma Kechang, a famous jurist, was entrusted to serve as the defender for Wu Faxian, a principal culprit of the Lin Biao, Jiang Qing Counter Revolutionary Clique Case in 1977 and participated in the revision of the Criminal Law of People’s Republic of China in the same year. He was the Honorary President of the Criminal Law Society of China Law Society, the Vice President of Dong Biwu Legal Thoughts Research Society of China Law Society, and a special adviser to the Supreme People's Court in China. He also once served as the Director of the Law Department and the Dean of the School of Law, Wuhan University, the Deputy Director General and Vice President of the Criminal Law Society of China Law Society, the Executive Director and Honorary Director of China Law Society, a member of the Law Discipline Group of National Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Committee, etc. His monograph Comparative Criminal Law Principle --- An Overview of Foreign Criminal Laws won the 6^thNational Book Award, the books An Introduction to Criminology and An Introduction to Criminal Penalty edited by him won respectively the 1st Prize and 2^nd Prize in the National Humanities and Social Sciences Research Achievement in HEIs Award; the work New Theory on Economic Crimes edited by him also won the National Book Award; the books Criminal Law(for which he was one of the chief-editors) and Chinese Criminal Law(for which he was the deputy editor), won respectively the 1^stPrize and the Grand Prize in the National Excellent Textbook Award. Moreover, the project entitled “Focusing on Improving the Competence of Graduates for the Cultivation of High-level Talents on Criminal Law"presided over by him won the 2^ndPrize in the National Teaching Achievement Award.