40 years on: Development of rule of law in Shenzhen

As a window and test field of China's reform and opening-up, Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, has explored new ways to promote the rule of law over the past 40 years.

I. Well-conceived legislation

Learn from abroad

Shenzhen has actively adopted good overseas legislative practices, contributing to China’s legislative progress in related fields.

July 1, 1992 - The National People's Congress Standing Committee authorized Shenzhen the legislative power as a special economic zone.

Put reform on legal track

Shenzhen has distinguished itself by advancing reform through legislation.

March 1, 2013 – It promulgated rules on commercial registration that separate registration from the approval for business operations.

1 year later – It had China’s highest commercial entity density, 116 for every 1,000 individuals.

Adhere to demand-oriented legislation

Shenzhen's legislation always focuses on solving real problems.

February 1987 – It issued regulations to encourage sci-tech talents to found private tech enterprises.

Within just 1 year - 104 private enterprises were set up in the city.

Later – It promulgated a number of regulations, including one regulating private tech enterprises, which accelerated the development of the city’s private economy.

As of June 2020 – It had formulated 235 regulations and 319 government rules.

II. Law-based administration

Limit administrative power

Administrative authorities in Shenzhen have been voluntarily acting in accordance with the law in order to fully activate market players.

Jan 1999 – It decided to develop legislation on 9 administrative acts.

Nov 2, 2001 – It specified 9 legal procedures that effectively regulate government actions.

In addition

Shenzhen led the country in:
- cancelling its authority in charge of enterprises
- standardizing the charging of administrative fees
- reforming the administrative approval system
- establishing a pre-examination system for administrative normative documents
- piloting whole-process recording of health-related law enforcement activities

Law-based exercise of administrative power

Shenzhen has found a new way to prevent and reduce abuse of power in the first place.

Sept 1988 – It established a legal counsel office for the municipal government and took the lead in recruiting overseas legal professionals as legal counsels for the government.

2003 - It took the lead in setting up a full-time government legal counsel team.

Open to self-correction

Shenzhen has established a power supervision and correction system centered on administrative reconsideration.

- Being one of China’s large- and medium-sized cities whose municipal governments received the most administrative reconsideration cases

- In the past 5 years - 11,690 such cases were accepted, with an average correction rate of 28.6% and a case-losing rate of only 1%. The city’s administrative reconsideration body issued 90 reconsideration proposals to relevant law enforcement agencies.

As a result:

- Shenzhen was rated excellent in the provincial law-based administration evaluation for several consecutive years.

- It won the China Law-based Government Award twice in a row.

- It was named as one of China’s demonstration cities for building a law-based government in July 2020.

III Law-based society

Various law popularization programs:

- a subsidy program for improving citizens’ legal literacy
- a mechanism for citizens to pledge allegiance to the Constitution
- a culture of legal compliance

All-round legal services

Shenzhen has also been committed to developing all-round, multi-tiered and efficient legal services, and was home to China's:

- first law firm in July 1983
- first cooperative law firm
- first partnership law firm
- first individually-owned law firm
- first local regulation on lawyers’ profession.

Innovate people's mediation

- Futian Model featuring lawyers serving as mediators
- Baoan Model involving lawyers, respected people and neighbors
- Longgang Model featuring leading Party members serving as mediators
- numerous mediation studios

IV Strong Party leadership

Since 1990, each congress of the CPC Shenzhen Municipal Committee has made specific arrangements on the promotion of rule of law in the city.

1994 - The committee took the lead in the country in setting the goal of developing a modern international city under the rule of law.

1999 - A guideline was worked out to accelerate efforts to build a socialist city under the rule of law.

2011 – A decision was made to make the first-class rule of law a more remarkable city feature.

2013 – A goal was set to develop a first-class rule of law city.

2017 – A four-year plan (2017-20) was unveiled to develop a rule of law demonstration city.

In 2019, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued a guideline on building Shenzhen into a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics, making “example of law-based governance” one of the city’s five strategic positions.