China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) will revise relevant laws to reduce the existing disparity of personal injury compensation for urban and rural residents, the Beijing News reported on Tuesday.
Ji Min, presiding judge of the SPC No.1 Civil Court, said investigations had been carried out in the last two years and interpretation of the law would be revised soon.
The lives of China's urban residents appear to be worth much more than those of their rural counterparts, the newspaper observed. Those living in urban areas could get more compensation for same the injuries suffered by people living in rural surroundings according to China's current laws, the paper stated.
In a traffic accident on December 15, 2005, in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, He Yuan, a 14-year-old girl and two friends going to school were killed when a truck hit their tricycles.
After the accident the parents of He Yuan were distressed to learn that they would receive 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) in compensation while the families of the other two girls were given more than 200,000 yuan (US$24,900) respectively simply because He Yuan was rural and her school friends were urban residents.
The court ruling was based on the interpretation of personal injury cases issued by the Supreme People's Court on December 4, 2003, which stipulates that compensation for death should be 20 times the average annual disposable income of urban residents in the year prior to a death and 20 times the average annual per capita net income of rural residents. .
Official statistics show that in 2005 the per capita disposable income of China's urban residents was 10,493 yuan (US$1,306) while rural per capita net income was 3,255 yuan (US$405).
In a statement submitted to the Supreme People's Court, Hu Xingdou, professor with the Beijing Institute of Technology and lawyer Li Fangping called for an end to unjust treatment in such cases and for a unified standard for personal injury compensation to be identified.
Earlier this month, Zhang Li, president of Chongqing Communications Research & Design Institute and also a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, submitted the motion to the NPC.
For the last two years Zhang Li has submitted the same motion. "The laws contradict the principle enshrined in the Constitution that all citizens are equal under the law," said Zhang.
"I have received a reply from the Supreme People's Court saying the issue might be resolved this year," said Zhang Li.
(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2006)