The Criminal Committee of the Inner Mongolia Lawyers Association continues to develop professional legal services, and takes the lead in cooperating with law firms to carry out regular criminal defense seminars to build a practical exchange and learning platform for regional lawyers. In order to systematically solve the judicial determination difficulties in illegal mining criminal cases, open up the defense path for the entire chain of resource crimes, and continue the results of the previous six "Elementary Defense" series of seminars, on the afternoon of July 23, 2026, the seventh elemental defense criminal forum "Legal Application and Defense Countermeasures for Illegal Mining Crimes" was successfully held at Beijing Jingshi (Hohhot) Law Firm. This forum continues the core methodology of refined deconstruction and systematic argumentation of "element-based defense" and disassembles the crime of illegal mining into six core modules: mineral type elements, licensing elements, behavioral elements, amount elements, identification elements, and administrative related elements. The weak points of the prosecution's evidence and the breakthrough points of the defense's guilt and misdemeanor are sorted out layer by layer, providing a professional reference with both theoretical depth and practical value for national mining-related criminal defense and mineral industry compliance.
Executive Director of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm (Hohhot), member of the Marriage and Family Professional Committee of the National Lawyers Association, Chief Legal Consultant of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Sun Lei, Doctor of Laws, Executive Director of the Criminal Trial and Training Institute of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National), Research on th e Defense of Fraud and Financial Fraud Director Xin Li Qiguang, Director of Beijing Haotian (Hohhot) Law Firm Guo Lina, Deputy Secretary-General of the Corporate Compliance Committee of the National Lawyers Association and Deputy Director of t he Management Committee of Beijing Xinglai Law FirmShen Xinyu, Deputy Director of the Criminal Committee of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Lawyers Association, Beijing Yingke (Hohhot) Zhang Yuxuan, deputy director of the law firm management committee, Cui Wei, deputy director of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National), Wang Faxu, equity partner of Jingshi Law Firm and honorary director of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National), Kunming director of the Mineral Energy Law Professional Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National), Hei Kaishou, director of the Criminal Committee of Jingsh Law Firm (National), and Zheng Fei, equity partner of Jingsh Law Firm, deputy director of the Criminal Committee of Jingsh Law Firm (National), and dean of the Criminal Defense Training Institute, attended the forum. The forum was chaired by Wang Xinyang, deputy secretary-general of the Criminal Professional Committee of Jingsh Law Firm (North China).
▲Activity site
Opening Speech
Sun Lei
Executive Director of Beijing Jingshi (Hohhot) Law Firm
Member of the Marriage and Family Committee of the All-China Lawyers Association
Chief legal consulting expert of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
In his opening speech, Director Sun Lei expressed warm congratulations on the successful convening of this forum. She pointed out that Inner Mongolia is rich in mineral resources and has a huge mining industry such as sand, coal, and building stones. Illegal mining cases have remained high all year round. Cases often have multiple practical problems such as overlap between administrative licensing and criminal identification, vague definitions of mineral types, controversial value calculations involved, and administrative actions that affect convictions. These are key crimes that local criminal defense lawyers frequently tackle. At present, the enforcement of laws on ecological environmental protection and mineral resource protection continues to tighten, and judicial authorities continue to refine the standards for cracking down on illegal mining cases, putting forward higher requirements for the professional capabilities of defense lawyers. She looks forward to this forum bringing together criminal defense and mineral law experts from across the country, breaking down barriers between theory and case handling practices, building a professional learning and exchange platform for regional lawyers, and effectively improving the ability to effectively defend mining-related cases. At the same time, I would like to thank lawyer Zheng Fei for taking the lead in creating the "Elementary Defense" series of forums and continuing to delve into the research on subdivided crimes. I would also like to express my gratitude to all the lecturers and conference staff, and wish the forum a fruitful outcome.
Keynote Speech**
Li Qiguang
Doctor of Laws
Executive Director of the Criminal Defense Training Institute of Jingshi Law Firm (National) Criminal Committee
Director of the Fraud and Fina ncial Fraud Defense Research Center
Dr. Li Qiguang shared about"Criteria for Identification of Illegal Mining Crimes". He systematically combed through the "Criminal Law" and relevant judicial interpretations related to mining in the two highlands, clarified the boundaries of the three types of objective behaviors of illegal mining: "unlicensed mining, cross-border mining, and protective mineral mining", and dismantled the three categories of upgraded sentencing standards for "serious circumstances" and "particularly serious circumstances", including amount, area, and administrative penalties. He combined a large number of judicial precedents to distinguish the boundaries between administrative violations and criminal crimes, clarify the standard of proof of subjective intention of this crime, and correct the one-sided judgment thinking in practice that "as long as there is mining, it is a crime". At the same time, focusing on the underlying logic of factor-based defense, we refined the four core review elements for conviction, built a basic cross-examination framework for lawyers to review the prosecution and trial stages, and consolidated the underlying legal support for the defense of illegal mining crimes.
Guo Lina Director of Beijing Haotian (Hohhot)Law Firm
Director Guo Lina brings"Permission and Exemption from Illegal Mining Crimes" to share the topic. She focused on four major scenarios with high incidence of mining permit defects, historical mining projects, local governments’ verbal commitments to attract investment, and temporary land acquisition and approval conflicts, and explored multiple exemptions and defense paths. She distinguished the legal effect of four types of documents: complete mining licenses, temporary mining procedures, project support soil acquisition approval documents, and policy rectification and mining documents, and demonstrated that flaws in administrative agency permissions and administrative trust interests can be used as core arguments to prevent the establishment of a crime. For cases related to the continued mining of historical sand and gravel mines and old mining areas in various places, combined with local mineral policy documents, a defense idea of "policy first, administrative first, criminal second" was proposed to provide a complete criminal argumentation logic for mining cases with procedural defects.
Shen Xinyu
Deputy Secretary General of the Corporate Compliance Committee of the National Lawyers Association
Deputy Director of the Management Commi ttee of Beijing Xinglai Law Firm
Lawyer Shen Xinyu provided an in-depth analysis on"Identification of Mining Behavior for the Crime of Illegal Mining". She focused on distinguishing five types of behavior patterns that are easily confused, such as stripping of legal infrastructure, temporary soil acquisition for projects, river dredging, cross-border mining, and over-scale sand mining, and dismantled the qualitative judgment logic of the judicial organs one by one. In response to the highly controversial core issue of "whether the acquisition of soil attached to the project is a mining activity", combined with the normative documents of the Ministry of Natural Resources and local cases of non-prosecution and innocence, a three-level judgment standard is proposed that distinguishes the use of earth and stone, the scale of mining, and the approval documents. She emphasized that the core of the defense lies in separating pure engineering construction behavior from profit-seeking mineral mining behavior, cutting off the logic of the public prosecution's conviction from objective behavioral elements, and clearly demarcating the boundary between crime and non-crime.
Cheung Yuxuan
Deputy Director of the Criminal Committee of the Autonomous Region Lawyers Association
Deputy Director of the Management Committee and Senior Equity Partner of Beijing Yingke (Hohhot) Law Firm
Lawyer Zhang Yuxuan lectured on"Issues on the Determination of Illegal Income in the Crime of Illegal Mining". She pointed out that the value of the mineral products involved and the amount of illegal income directly determine the sentencing level, which is the core defense breakthrough in illegal mining cases. In view of the common problems in judicial practice such as not deducting legal costs such as mining equipment, labor, transportation, taxes and fees, directly identifying illegal income based on the total sales price, and not distinguishing between legal mining and illegal mining output, a complete cross-examination plan is given based on the professional rules of asset evaluation and mineral accounting. At the same time, we sorted out the practical skills of determining the market price of mineral products, calculating the stock ore, and checking the upstream and downstream flow, and formed a three-in-one amount defense system of "eliminating legal costs, splitting compliant output, and correcting the valuation benchmark" to effectively reduce the amount involved in the case.
Cui Wei Deputy Director of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National)Director Cui Wei gave a lecture on the topic of"Analysis of Cross-examination Strategies of Common Appraisal Opinions in Mining-Involved Cases". Illegal mining cases rely heavily on three types of judicial appraisals: geological reserves appraisal, mineral value assessment, and ecological damage assessment. Once the appraisal opinions are accepted, they will directly determine conviction and sentencing. He sorted out the key points of cross-examination from the five dimensions of appraisal institution qualifications, survey and calculation methods, price benchmark selection, on-site survey procedures, and integrity of inspection materials and samples. He provided a written cross-examination opinion template that can be directly applied to common defects in practice such as no on-site survey, expanded calculation range, unreasonable market price selection, and appraisers without geological professional qualifications. Combined with many typical cases where the court did not accept the identification of flaws, it guides lawyers to break down the prosecution's key evidence from both procedural and substantive perspectives.
Wang Faxu
Equity partner of Jingsh Law Firm
Honorary Director of the Criminal Professional Committee of Jingsh Law Firm (National)
Lawyer Wang Faxu shared "The relationship between the crime of illegal mining and government behavior". He focused on the significant defense value of administrative actions such as local government investment promotion, on-site mining permission, time-limited rectification notices, and industrial support documents in determining the characterization of criminal cases. He proposed the application of the principle of administrative trust protection in mining-related criminal cases, and demonstrated that the party concerned carried out mining based on the government's written and oral permission and subjectively did not have the intention to illegally mine, which could prevent the crime from being established. For the "release first and punish later" cases where administrative agencies first acquiesce in mining and then pursue accountability later, we sort out a complete evidence collection list, guide lawyers to obtain administrative documents such as meeting minutes, work ledgers, and communication records, build a complete defense chain for administrative action intervention, and open up a new defense angle for policy-induced illegal mining cases.
Heikaishou
Director of Kunming, Jingshi Law Firm (National) Mineral Energy Law Committee
Director of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National)
Lawyer Hei Kaishou conducted professional sharing on"The definition of "mine" in the crime of illegal mining". Currently, whether sand, gravel, clay, building stones, tailings, and associated minerals are “mineral resources” within the meaning of the criminal law is the most controversial point of judicial disagreement across the country. He combined the mineral classification catalog of the "Mineral Resources Law Implementation Rules" and the Ministry of Natural Resources' response documents to clarify the qualitative standards for various types of non-metallic resources one by one, distinguishing ordinary engineering residues from operational minerals. In view of the misunderstandings in many judgments that unanimously identify river clay and mountain gravel as minerals, we sort out the opinions of non-prosecution and innocence judgments, deny the constitutive elements of this crime from the level of object elements, and provide core defense points for non-metal mining cases.
Zheng Fei
Equity partner of Jingsh Law Firm
Deputy Director of the Criminal Committee of Jingshi Law Firm (National)
Dean of the Criminal Defense Training Institute of Jingshi Law Firm (National) Criminal Committee
Chief initiator of the "Elemental Defense" forum
In the final summary and comment section, lawyer Zheng Fei, the general initiator of the forum, made a comprehensive summary of the effectiveness of this forum. He said that the seventh forum focused on illegal mining, a resource crime with strong regional characteristics and complex legal relations. The topic selection was in line with the current background of ecological justice and mineral compliance, and it inherited the research context of the previous five economic crimes and the sixth money laundering crime. It achieved a full coverage of criminal subdivisions and fully reflected the forum team’s accurate grasp of criminal defense practice hot spots and industry judicial trends. He reviewed the development process of the "Elementary Defense" series of forums from its inception to the present, and pointed out that the series of forums have always adhered to the core features of theoretical implementation, case support, and unified methodology. They do not talk about legal principles or pile up legal provisions, but all output practical strategies that can be directly implemented in case handling. The crime of illegal mining, as a typical crime that crosses administrative and criminal aspects, can give full play to the methodological advantages of factor-based defense by dismantling it into modules and breaking down the chain of evidence item by item.
This forum simultaneously opened an online live broadcast channel, and the atmosphere of online and offline discussions was lively. Lawyers participating in the conference had in-depth exchanges with teaching experts on difficult mining-related cases that they handled, and there was sufficient interaction with on-site Q&A. The forum concluded successfully in a substantial, rigorous and enthusiastic professional discussion atmosphere. Guests and participating lawyers unanimously stated that illegal mining cases have complex elements and high professional barriers. This forum fully covers the key points of defense throughout the entire process from characterization, procedures, behavior, amount, identification, and administrative defense. It uniformly uses the element-based defense system to sort out the case handling logic and effectively complements its own professional shortcomings in the field of mineral resource crimes. The shared content has extremely high practical reference value.
In the next step, the Criminal Committee of the Inner Mongolia Lawyers Association, the National Criminal Committee of Jingsh Law Firm, and the Hohhot Branch of Jingsh Law Firm will continue to use the "Elementary Defense" series of criminal forums as the core carrier, based on regional legal service needs, focusing on economic crimes, environmental resource crimes, corporate criminal compliance and other key areas to carry out regular professional seminars and training, continue to promote the professional and refined development of criminal defense, and use high-quality criminal legal services to assist the standardized development of the mining industry, assist the construction of regional ecological rule of law, and maintain judicial fairness and justice.