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Attaching great importance to safeguarding human rights through
perfecting legislation, ensuring an impartial judicature and strictly
enforcing the law, China has made considerable progress in building
a judicial guarantee for human rights.
It is a principle of the Chinese Constitution and the basic program
of managing state affairs of the Chinese government to run the country
according to law. Over 390 laws and decisions involving legal problems
have been formulated by the NPC and its Standing Committee, more
than 800 administrative laws and regulations by the State Council,
and 8,000-plus local laws and regulations by the local people's
congresses since the initiation of reform and opening-up. As a result,
a fairly complete legal system has taken shape, with the Constitution
as the core. There are laws covering all fields of social life,
providing a comprehensive judicial guarantee for the various human
rights of the citizens. To improve the legal sense of the administrative
law executors and judicial personnel at various levels and the sense
of the rights and duties of the citizens, China has actively carried
out publicity stressing the rule of law and mass activities promoting
knowledge of the law. Some 750 million people in China have participated
in activities involving the study of laws, over 280 special lectures
on the legal system for leaders at the provincial or ministerial
level have been held with an accumulative total of 12,000 participants,
and 184,000 leaders at the prefectural or departmental level have
received regular legal training in the past five years.
China punishes criminal offenses in accordance with the law, and
protects the safety of citizens' lives and property and other human
rights from infringement. In 2000, the public security and judicial
organs adopted forceful measures to crack down on serious crimes
of violence in accordance with the law, such as crimes with gangster
connections and characteristics, crimes involving the use of guns
and explosives, and gang-related crimes, as well as frequently occurring
criminal activities such as theft and robbery. They also punished,
according to law, a handful of criminals who caused deaths or gathered
people to upset the public order by organizing and using the Falun
Gong cult, effectively safeguarding social stability and the people's
lives and property.
To deepen the reform of the judicial system, courts at various
levels have strengthened the administration of justice and law enforcement,
actively implemented the system of choosing and appointing presiding
judges and individual jurors, fully carried out the system of public
adjudication, perfected the judicial rehabilitation system, and
further intensified the internal supervisory and circumscribing
mechanism of the courts and the mechanism for correcting errors,
thereby effectively safeguarding impartial justice. In 2000, China's
courts tried or handled over 560,000 criminal cases at the first
instance, in which more than 640,000 criminals were sentenced; over
3.41 million civil cases at the first instance; more than 1.31 million
cases involving economic, intellectual property and maritime affairs;
2,447 cases involving state compensation; 86,614 administrative
lawsuits, including 13,635 cases involving the revocation of inappropriate
administrative practices by administrative organs, or 15.74 percent
of the total number; and cleared over 138,000 cases exceeding the
trial time-limits, and some 475,000 long-pending cases, basically
liquidating the arrears of cases and effectively safeguarding the
legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons and other
organizations.
To earnestly guarantee that persons in financial difficulty can
exercise their litigation rights according to law, the Supreme People's
Court formulated the Regulations on Providing Judicial Assistance
for Litigants Actually in Financial Difficulty in July 2000 to improve
the judicial assistance system. According to the Regulations, in
dealing with civil and administrative cases involving litigants
actually in financial difficulty, especially the elderly, women,
minors, the disabled persons and laid-off workers pressing for payment
of alimony, the costs of maintenance and upbringing, pensions for
families of deceased persons and old- age pensions, or for payment
of medical costs and acquisition of material compensations for victims
of traffic or industrial accidents and faulty medical treatment,
payment of litigation costs may be postponed, reduced or remitted
in accordance with the law. In 2000, courts across the country made
decisions on such costs in more than 190,000 cases.
Procuratorial organs have reinforced litigation supervision according
to law to improve the quality of handling cases and safeguard the
legitimate rights of citizens. In 2000, procuratorial organs throughout
the country placed 4,626 criminal cases involving misconduct by
judicial personnel on file for investigation according to law; put
forward 14,349 rectification opinions against public security organs
adopting improper mandatory measures and other law-violating actions;
corrected cases of exceeding the time-limit of summoning criminal
suspects for detention at the investigation, suing and adjudication
stages, 64,254 person-times; protested 3,798 court decisions and
rulings on criminal cases, which were regarded as wrong, and 16,944
court decisions on civil administrative cases; and put forward rectification
opinions against illegal commutation, release on parole or medical
parole, 9,318 person-times. In the meantime, procuratorates have
actively carried out nationwide a system of the main-suit procurator
assuming full responsibility for handling cases, selected main-suit
prosecutors through competition, and based on this, carried out
the reform of public prosecutions, and trial-implemented the systems
of public investigations of non- prosecution cases and the demonstration
of evidence before the court -- all these have gone a long way toward
safeguarding impartial justice and the legitimate rights and interests
of criminal suspects.
The lawyer system and the system of legal assistance have been
constantly improved, and are playing an increasingly important role
in safeguarding the rights of citizens and promoting impartial justice.
At present, there are over 9,500 lawyers' offices and more than
110,000 lawyers in China. In addition, 92 foreign law firms and
28 Hong Kong law firms had been allowed to set up offices on the
Chinese mainland by July 2000. In 1999, lawyers throughout the country
handled 1,364,000 lawsuits; in 2000, they participated in the defense
of over 310,000 criminal cases, and provided legal assistance for
criminal suspects at the criminal procedure and investigation stage
in more than 170,000 cases. By the end of 2000, China had established
1,853 legal assistance organs at various levels, with 6,109 full-time
personnel in their employ. In 2000, more than 170,000 cases of legal
assistance were handled in China, in which over 228,000 persons
received assistance, and 830,000 persons were offered consultancy
on law-related problems, thus protecting the legitimate rights and
interests of the poor, weak and disabled and other litigants.
China protects, in accordance with the law, the legitimate rights
of prisoners, and has achieved remarkable results in reforming criminals.
The recurrence rate of prisoners released at the end of their terms
has remained between 6 and 8 percent for many years, a very low
rate compared to those of other countries. To strengthen the supervision
of the law enforcement of prison staff, the people's procuratorates
at various levels have further improved the system of establishing
resident agencies and offices in prisons throughout the country.
In 1999, the Ministry of Justice began to carry out a three-year
education program to improve the basic qualities of the prison police.
As a result, their level of law enforcement has been markedly improved.
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