China’s administrative law enforcement work constantly improving for 70 years

Tremendous progress has been made in improving China's administrative law enforcement during the 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The building of China's administrative law enforcement system wasn't started until the beginning of the reform and opening-up in 1978 when the words "law enforcement" appearing in the country's fundamental policy document on the building of a legal system, according to Yang Weidong, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

"Especially during the late 1980s and 1990s, when the legislation on administrative penalties was put on the agenda, the concept of administrative law enforcement started to take shape with a set of independent concepts and redress procedures," he said.

As more and more laws were enacted in China, issues such as little observation of laws and sluggish law enforcement became increasingly prominent.

Against this backdrop, local governments started to conduct large-scale examinations of law enforcement practices in an effort to standardize and strengthen the supervision of the administrative law enforcement work.

Northeast China's Heilongjiang province took the lead in doing so. From 1982 through 1988, the local government examined the enforcement of laws on such areas as China-foreign equity joint ventures, land administration and compulsory education, as well as a number of local rules and regulations.

The central government was also keeping up the pace. The departments of the State Council launched rounds of examinations of law enforcement starting in 1988.

Meanwhile, local governments were also starting to issue rules to regulate the law enforcement practices with the southwestern province of Sichuan taking the initiative. The eastern province of Jiangxi, Beijing and other provincial-level governments followed later.

With the release between 1996 and 2012 of "three laws and one regulation", which includes the laws on administrative penalties, administrative licensing and administrative compulsion and the regulation on government information disclosure, many persistent problems in law enforcement were finally eradicated.

As China accelerated the building of a law-based government in recent years, the level of standardization was no longer the sole criteria for judging law enforcement practices.

In 2015 local law enforcement authorities began to implement the system of listing powers and responsibilities in an effort to speed up the transformation of government functions and push forward reforms to delegate power, improve regulation, and upgrade services.

The government has also rolled out a nationwide whole-process law enforcement recording system and adopted information and internet technology to improve the transparency and efficiency of law enforcement activities.

What's more, by adopting more humanized approaches, law enforcement authorities also cultivated a more harmonious relationship with the subjects of law enforcement.

In summarizing the progress China has made in improving its administrative law enforcement system, Zhao Zhenhua, head of the Administrative Law Enforcement Coordination and Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, points out that China has basically established the relevant principles, constantly improved the relevant systems and mechanisms, further standardized the relevant practices and gradually improved the supervision system to finally see the effect of advanced administrative law enforcement.