Procuratorate system better serves public interests

More than 27,000 fish fry were put into the East China Sea by two seafood sellers as compensation for illegally selling seahorses, a national second-class protected creature, in June.

The two were among more than 40 sellers that took responsibility through civil compensation to help repair damage to the environment after the procuratorate of Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, urged local administrative departments, including those involved in market regulation and ocean and fishery administration, to perform their supervisory duties.

In a joint operation, authorities seized more than 7,600 dried wild seahorses.

Hu Weilie, head of the public interest litigation office at the Supreme People's Procuratorate, told China Daily that safeguarding the people's interests is the goal of China's procuratorial public interest litigation system, and the people's support and participation is the driving force for the system's development.

In recent years, procuratorial organs across the country have seen rapid growth of such litigation in areas including environmental protection and food safety.

"In the new era, public interest litigation must meet the people's desire to have a better life. To judge the effectiveness of procuratorial work, we have to see whether it enhances people's sense of gain, happiness and security," he said.

Taking a people-centered approach is a significant principle of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, which was introduced during a central conference on work related to overall law-based governance in November last year. The Thought is also the fundamental guideline for overall law-based governance in China.

It highlighted that the fundamental goal of promoting overall law-based governance is to protect the people's rights and interests.

The procuratorial public interest litigation system is designed to promote the modernization and capacity of national governance by rule of law, Hu said.

"The system focuses on the protection of public interests in areas closely related to the immediate interests of the people, which is in line with the people-centered principle, giving top priority to their expectations and aspirations for a better life," he said.

The Civil Procedure Law and the Administrative Procedure Law, which were amended in June 2017, established the system that year allowing procuratorates to conduct civil or administrative litigation against individuals and entities that harm public interest or government bodies that fail to perform their duties, causing the harm.

Under the system, procuratorates can make suggestions to such bodies, urging them to correct problems themselves and properly perform their duties. If those departments make timely efforts to tackle the problems addressed by the procuratorate, they will be exempted from prosecution.

"In practice, a case often involves multiple departments with overlapping functions, which requires coordination from multiple sides. The public interest litigation system has the advantage of fostering such coordination. It also urges departments to jointly engage in management of problems, help solve governance problems and create or make use of existing mechanisms to resolve the problems," Hu said.

"The essence of the public interest litigation system is to ensure that government entities follow the law and jointly safeguard national and social public interests, so as to address problems at the source and promote the improvement of governance in relevant industries and fields. It has had a positive impact on procuratorate supervision, and it preserves judicial resources."

Nearly all grassroots-level procuratorates started to engage in public interest litigation in 2018, and the number of cases they have dealt with each year since then exceeds 100,000, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Statistics from the SPP show that procuratorates nationwide handled 151,260 public interest litigation cases last year, up by about 19 percent year-on-year. They also issued about 118,000 pre-prosecution suggestions last year to departments involved, up 14.1 percent year-on-year.

In the first five months of this year, procuratorates nationwide had issued 43,443 suggestions.

"Procuratorates can issue suggestions to departments involved urging them to perform their duties, which could resolve most of the problems before trial. This would have the best social effect with the minimum judicial input," Hu said.

In one typical case, the SPP called in December 2019 for an investigation of environmental damage in Wanfeng Lake in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. The working team there found the pollution was mainly caused by illegal fish cage farming.

The government of Longlin county in Guangxi established a joint team in February last year to remove the cages and floating houses.

However, due to the difficulty in dealing with a large number of fish and the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, the removal was slow. With the cages covering an area of 253,000 square meters, the removal lasted until May.

Then Longlin's procuratorate issued suggestions to the local ecology and environment bureau and agriculture and rural affairs bureau. It urged them to implement requirements for remediation and to conduct a thorough cleanup. The rectification measures were completed four months later.

The public interest litigation system mainly covers the fields of environment and natural resources, food and drug safety, State-owned property protection, transfers of State-owned land-use rights and protection of the rights of juveniles, heroes, martyrs and soldiers.

Expanded scope

Hu said that since the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in 2019, as the scope of public litigation continues to expand, so has the number of cases in new fields, including online infringement; the protection of cultural relics and cultural heritage, personal information and the rights and interests of certain groups, including minors and people with disabilities; and poverty alleviation.

"We actively make good use of existing laws and regulations to explore public interest litigation, striving for the support and recognition from all aspects," he said.

"However, not all infringements related to public interest should be dealt with by procuratorate organs. We should focus more on cases that lack a clear liable party or an effective channel for assistance."

In June last year, the Supreme People's Procuratorate launched a three-year campaign targeting seven key problems that people strongly complain about, including water pollution, solid waste, wildlife protection and food safety.

Moreover, public interest litigation prosecution has also been integrated into the rural vitalization strategy-which was first proposed in the report to the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017-to promote the protection of arable land resources, traditional villages and rural features and to improve the rural living environment, according to the SPP.

From January to November last year, 29,249 cases concerning rural areas were filed.

Society is becoming increasingly aware of the public interest litigation system, which has also won acclaim from the international community, Hu said.

"Through the system, polluted environments have been restored, damaged public interests have been protected and administrative organs that have been lazy in performing their duties have been pressured," he said. "It has also given people a greater sense of gain and a clearer sense of the progress of the rule of law."