Rule Of Law In China: Progress And Problems. Lin Li
those who have reached the age of 75 at the trial, and set up a system of restricting the reprieve of the execution of the death penalty, which will create legal and institutional conditions for the gradual reduction of the application of death penalty. On October 27, 2014, the draft Criminal Law Amendment (9) was submitted to the Standing Committee of the NPC for consideration. Based on the principle of reducing the application of the death penalty, the Amendment (9) proposed to abolish the death penalty for nine crimes: arms and ammunition smuggling, nuclear materials smuggling, counterfeit money smuggling, counterfeiting money, fund-raising fraud, crime of organizing prostitution, crime of enforcing prostitution, obstructing the execution of military positions, and crime of spreading rumors during the war; explore the establishment of a system of criminal reconciliation, work hard to repair the social relations destroyed by crimes and reduce social confrontation; improve the system of community correction to help criminals actively integrate into society and reduce the rate of recidivism. By the end of June 2012, 1,054,000 criminals were accepted into community correctional institutions and 587,000 were released after correction. The rate of recidivism among those who were released from community correctional institutions after correction was about 0.2%; improve the system of handling juvenile criminal cases leniently, establish conditional non-prosecution system and criminal record seal system to help minor offenders who have committed but petty crimes return to society smoothly, which helps to promote social harmony. As of July 2011, there had been 2,331 juvenile courts across the country. From 2002 to 2011, the rate of juvenile delinquency in China basically remained at 1–2%.
Third, improve the management system of the political and legal team and enhance the level of law enforcement and justice. Implement a standardized national qualification examination system for judicial professionals, and incorporate the exam for new judges, prosecutors, and lawyers and notary qualification into the national judicial exam. From 2002 to the end of 2011, a total of nearly 500,000 people passed the national judicial examination and obtained legal professional qualifications. Measures were also taken to establish law enforcement qualification examination for police officers. In 2011, more than 1.73 million police officers attended the first law enforcement qualification examination, of which 1.69 million passed the examination. By improving the recruitment and cultivation system of police officers, 65,000 people were recruited into police or law colleges or universities, and after graduation they were largely allocated to the grass-roots political and legal units, thus improving the quality of frontline police officers. Through the reform of the national judicial examination system, the reserve of legal professionals in the central and western regions and ethnic regions has been increased, alleviating the shortage of grass-roots judges and prosecutors. The law enforcement force at the grass-roots level has been stabilized by resolving the special difficulties of judges, prosecutors, people’s police, and judicial administrators. At the same time, all political and legal units had continually improved the vocational training system and actively innovated the training concepts, methods, and means so as to bring training closer to law enforcement and meet the requirements of law enforcement. In the past 5 years, over 1.5 million judges, 750,000 prosecutors, and 6 million police officers received training in the country, which has greatly raised the police officers’ ability to handle cases and serve the people.
By improving the lawyers’ system, the lawyers’ professional orientation as socialist legal workers with Chinese characteristics has been clearly defined, and the legal practice rights of lawyers were protected, which helps to promote healthy development of the lawyers’ profession. As of the end of 2011, there were 18,200 law firms in China and 215,000 lawyers. In 2011, the number of lawyers serving as legal advisers reached a total of 392,000 across the country, an increase of 24.6% over 2008; 2.31 million lawsuits were handled, realizing an increase of 17.7% compared with that in 2008; more than 625,000 non-litigation legal matters were handled, an increase of 17% over 2008; nearly 845,000 legal aid projects were contracted, an increase of 54.5% over 2008.
Fourth, solve the funding shortage in political and legal teams and guarantee their performing of duties in accordance with the law. The new round of reforms of the judicial system and mechanisms put forward a new funding guarantee system of “clearly defining responsibilities, categorizing burdens, disengaging income from payments, and fully covering the payments” to replace the old one of “funds grading and management at different levels” to improve financial security at central and provincial level, and to establish a mechanism for the normal growth of public funds; set standards for the infrastructure construction of the judiciary and guidelines for the equipment configuration in judicial organs, improve office conditions and conditions for handling cases, and improve the level of informationization and scientificity so as to provide a solid material guarantee for enhancing the judicial capacity; increase investment in political and legal infrastructure and equipment construction and adhere to the principle of “shifting focus, funding guarantees, and investments down to the lower level” to give priority to improving the basic political and legal infrastructure and equipment construction at the grassroots level. These reforms effectively solved the long-standing tensions of political–legal organs caused by lack of hands and funds and outdated equipment and other difficulties, which greatly enhanced the overall working capacity of the grassroots political and legal units and encouraged the morale of police officers. In recent years, grassroots police stations captured 40% of the total number of fugitives arrested each year by public security organs throughout the country. Police officers at the grassroots police stations accounted for about 70% of the total number of police dispatched by public security agencies. The number of people arrested and prosecuted in the past 3 years at the grassroots procuratorates accounted for 95% of the total handled across the country over the same period. In the past 3.5 years, grassroots courts handled and executed 89.28% of the total cases handled and enforced throughout the country. During the “11th Five-Year Plan”, the judicial institutes handled 3.6 million mediation and dispute settlement cases, and helped grassroots governments handle 3.134 million social conflicts and disputes.
2.7.Significantly Enhancing the Concept of the Rule of Law Among the Public
Great importance is attached to popularizing legal knowledge among the public, establishing the concept of the rule of law in the whole society to eventually form a social atmosphere that is law-abiding, law-observing, and law-using, a society that is not willing to, will not, and dare not breach the law, and a good environment in which people tend to act in accordance with law, to find a legal solution to problems, to solve problems and resolve conflicts by using law. These are the basic conditions for and an important symbol of the success of the rule of law in China. Since the reform and opening-up, the rule of law has profoundly changed China’s society and Chinese’ notions as well. The ideas of democracy, rule of law, freedom, human rights, fairness, and justice are imperceptibly affecting people’s values and integrating with people’s life style. The concept of the rule of law in society has obviously been strengthened.
Since 1985, the Standing Committee of the NPC has passed six decisions that popularize legal knowledge among the people, and has also successively implemented six Five-Year Plans for popularizing law. During the first law popularizing Five-Year Plan period, more than 700 million citizens studied preliminary legal knowledge. In the period of the second Five-Year Plan, there were 96 industries drawing up law popularizing plans, organized to study more than 200 specialized laws and regulations. During the third Five-Year Plan, 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities carried out law-based governance in combination with the law popularizing movement, and 95% of prefecture-level cities, 87% of counties (districts and cities), and 75% of grassroots units carried out their work according to law. During the fourth Five-Year Plan, 850 million citizens accepted various forms of education on the rule of law. During the fifth Five-Year Plan, over 24,600 leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial level in the country and 415,300 leading cadres at the prefectural and municipal levels attended lectures on China’s legal system. Leading cadres’ concept and ability of governance and decision-making according to law was enhanced. The popularization of law in the sixth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) had been promoted in an all-round way, the laws and regulations of the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics with the Constitution as the core had been widely publicized and popularized, and thus the administrative level of the rule of law in the whole society had been further improved. The publicity and education of the rule of law has played