Abstract: The Criminal Law Amendment (VIII) defines “pilferage” as independent charge，which causes the controversy among theorists and confusion in judicial practice. From the perspective of criminal law theory，“pilferage” belongs to theft. Now that there is a crime of theft in the criminal law，a crime of “pilferage” not only brings concurrence of charge to the same act，but also brings concurrence of penalty. In judicial practice，as the amount of property loss caused by “pilferage” is not clearly defined in the Criminal Law Amendment (VIII)，the amount of crime cases increases greatly，which aggravates the penalty essentially and violates the crime step theory.

Key words: crime, theft, pilferage, separating “pilferage” as a crime, the Criminal Law Amendment (VIII)