Breakthroughs in rule of law

Eliminate out-dated regulations

Currently there are two processes intermingling with one another, namely total reform and adopting the rule of law. In general they are in accordance with each other, but in certain cases radical reform measures might be against the existing laws.

For example, when recruited by the government last year to do a study on 12 cities that had introduced reform, we found that Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, had done quite a good job with its land reform, but some of their measures went against the current Land Administration Law.

In fact, sometimes the current laws lag far behind social reality. For example, although we have introduced a market economy and allowed private capital to take part in economy for quite some time now, the Labor Law continues to define the relations between labor and capital as "administrative relations", as if the planned economy still existed. As a result of the legal definition, workers have no legal right to go on strike even though strikes do occur.

Regulating the relations between labor and capital according to the law is an urgently needed task. This should not be interpreted as encouraging workers to take to the streets. On the contrary, only laws can better solve the disputes between labor and capital and resolve strikes properly.

Song Xiaowu, a consultant with the China Society of Economic Reform

Replace bad laws with good ones

It is a general consensus that the abolishing of outdated laws of the past and the rule of man, at least in part, released the potential of the Chinese economy.

Today, the rule of law being promoted by the Party should incorporate both implementing good laws and abolishing the bad ones.

Legislators can expect to be quite busy doing the necessary jobs and setting widely accepted rules for the society; the judicial branch, which will be more independent, also needs to adjust itself to suit the new conditions.

A new era of comprehensively governing the country with law will begin, and hopefully the rule of law will unleash more potential and propel the nation's overall growth in it.

Li Shuguang, deputy dean of the Postgraduate School with the China University of Political Science and Law