The third paragraph of Article 196 of China's Criminal Law stipulates: "Whoever steals a credit card and uses it shall be convicted and punished in accordance with the provisions of Article 264 of this Law." That is, directly convicted and punished for theft. However, in judicial practice, there are some disputes about how to convict the act of stealing forged credit cards and using them: one view is that the crime of theft should be directly determined by the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law; Another view is that the crime of credit card fraud should be defined in general. The author agrees with the view that it constitutes the crime of credit card fraud, but whether the perpetrator subjectively knows that different criminal constitutions will be formed, the qualitative reasons for this behavior should be analyzed differently. 1. This behavior cannot be convicted of theft as stipulated in the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law. The reasons are as follows: (1) The "credit card" in the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law only refers to real credit cards with financial nature, excluding forged credit cards. The Legislative Interpretation of the Meaning of "Credit Card" in the Criminal Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) (hereinafter referred to as "Legislative Interpretation") adopted by the 13th meeting of the Standing Committee of the Tenth NPC on February 29th, 2004 stipulates that "Credit Card" refers to an electronic payment card issued by commercial banks or other financial institutions with all or part of the functions of consumer payment, credit loan, transfer settlement, cash deposit and withdrawal, etc. Forged "credit card" obviously does not have the above characteristics and does not belong to the category of "credit card" in the relevant provisions of criminal law. Therefore, the theft of a forged "credit card" is not a "credit card" as stipulated in the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law, and it is not applicable to the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law to directly identify the crime of theft, otherwise it will violate the principle of a legally prescribed punishment for a specified crime. (2) Paragraph 3 of Article 196 of the Criminal Law is actually an exception to the principle of "judging from a felony" in the Criminal Law. The author believes that there are legislative reasons: because the perpetrator steals the credit card and uses it, subjectively stealing the credit card as a means to achieve the criminal purpose of illegally possessing the property of the credit card owner. In fact, it is a natural extension of theft to "cheat" by using someone else's credit card (card theft is a kind of credit card fraud), and ultimately it is to achieve its criminal purpose of illegally possessing the property of the credit card owner. Objectively speaking, theft and credit card "fraud" ultimately infringe on the property rights and interests of credit card owners rather than the property rights and interests of banks or other financial institutions. Because banks or other financial institutions only bear the duty of care for fraudulent use of credit cards (for example, pay attention to whether it is forged or fraudulent use of other people's credit cards; Whether it is an illegal credit card, etc. ), as long as this obligation is fulfilled, the bank will no longer bear the loss of deposits caused by fraudulent use of customers. Especially when the thief obtains the password and withdraws money from the ATM, the bank's payment obligation to the original owner disappears with the thief's withdrawal behavior. Therefore, in the case of stealing credit cards and using them, the perpetrator subjectively carried out the theft for the purpose of illegally possessing the property of the credit card owner, which eventually caused the property loss of the credit card owner. According to the principle of the unification of subject and object, it is more accurate to identify theft. However, stealing forged credit cards and using them will not cause the property loss of forged credit card holders, which is objectively different from the above situation. Therefore, stealing forged credit cards and using them cannot be convicted and punished according to the third paragraph of Article 196 of the Criminal Law.