Rule of law essential to social governance
The recent international symposium on social governance and the rule of law in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province Photo: Wang Guanglu/CSST
NANJING—At a recent international symposium on social governance and the rule of law, participants noted that the rule of law is not only fundamental to modernizing China’s system and capacity for governance, but also indispensable to social governance.
Gong Pixiang, director of the Institute for Chinese Legal Modernization Studies at Nanjing Normal University, said that constructing a modern social governance system based on the rule of law meets the inherent need to advance the modernization of state governance and accelerate the construction of the rule of law in China.
Fan Guanfeng, dean of the School of Traffic Law at Shandong Jiaotong University, said that disadvantageous institutional mechanisms and low capacity for and level of social governance are still prominent problems.
Fan suggested strengthening people’s awareness of law and rules through education. In addition, Fan said that it is important to rationally define the scope and boundaries of public power, so that public power is neither absent nor offside in the process of social governance.
Li Yuqing, a professor from the Law School at East China University of Science and Technology, said that when constructing a society under the rule of law, we must consider all aspects of its development and integrate it with political, economic, cultural and social elements.
Intricate interpersonal relationships in society permeate all areas of state or social governance and become the invisible system of the rule of law, Li said. The construction of a society under the rule of law must be aware of the invisible system, nurturing the awareness and mindset of the rule of law.
Rural governance is an important part of China’s national governance, social governance and grassroots governance. Recent years have seen remarkable achievements in modernizing China’s system and capacity for rural governance.
Gao Qicai, a professor at Tsinghua University’s Law School, said that the construction of rural grassroots organizations with the Party organization as the core has been further strengthened, the rural governance system has been improved, and methods have been increasingly innovative. At the same time, rural governance also has such problems as imperfect institutional mechanisms and the insufficient participation of rural people.
To improve the rural governance system, Gao said it is important to combine self-governance, rule of law and rule of virtue. Institutional construction is significant, and we need to facilitate the formulation and improvement of laws in the field of rural governance.
Mediation is an important solution to social conflicts and disputes. Li Hao, a professor from the Law School of Nanjing Normal University, said that data of the courts for first instances of civil cases between 1979 and 2018 shows that the courts in the country face prominent problems such as a lack of judges and high pressure on judgments, which further necessitates the improvement of the multiple dispute resolution mechanism.
In the era of information technology, online mediation has a good technical and institutional basis and could become the innovative form of China’s multiple dispute resolution mechanism, said Qian Dajun, a professor at Jilin University’s Law School. People’s mediation is expected to move in the direction of “internet plus people’s mediation” because of its neutrality and procedural justice.
edited by JIANG HONG
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