Coastal city of Zhanjiang takes new measures to boost law-based development

The Justice Bureau of Zhanjiang, a coastal city in Southeast China's Guangdong province, has adopted a series of measures to build a benign rule of law environment for the city's development since the beginning of this year.

As part of the authority's effort to build a law-based business environment, real-estate developers having projects in Zhanjiang have been exempt from fees of various kinds as the authority revised its rules for charging such enterprises.

The authority also conducted a thorough review of more than 170 government documents and contracts to ensure their compliance with laws and regulations.

"The Rule of Law leads to the best business environment and it is our top priority at present to develop a system for the improvement of the business environment," said Yan Zhanke, head of the Justice Bureau of Zhanjiang.

Currently, the authority's legal counsel division is busy reviewing the agreements concerning construction of a new-type of integrated petrochemical project which is invested by the German petrochemical giant BASF SE and to be located in Zhanjiang.

With a total investment of $10 billion, the project is the largest foreign investment in China's petrochemical industry, and serves as a role model for bilateral cooperation between China and Germany.

Measures have also been taken to improve the city's public legal service system.

So far, a four-layer public legal service platform has been established across the city, with up to 1,940 public legal service offices covering every community and village of the city.

By nearly tripling the subsidy for lawyers participating in legal-aid programs, the authority has also seen the total number of participating lawyers rise from about 100 to over 200, accounting for almost half of the city's lawyer population.

As for mediation work, the authority has designated more than 30 local retired judges as mediators, substantially improving the professional level of the local mediator team.

During the past two years, Zhanjiang, which used to be an agriculture-heavy city, has been designated as one of the central cities in China's Beibu Gulf region and a sub-central city of Guangdong province, meaning that the city will assume a more significant role in regional development.