Building a society based on rule of law

China has made remarkable progress in guaranteeing judicial protection of human rights. The rule of law in the country has been constantly improving and providing better protection to human rights since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2012.

China has taken measures to optimize the allocation of judicial power, improve the judicial accountability and judicial information disclosure systems, deepen reforms in the criminal procedure by according greater importance to court trials, attach more importance to lawyers’ role and public supervision, make the handling of petitions and complaints more systematic, abolish the labor education system and strengthen the State judicial assistance program.

The people’s courts have replaced the case filing investigation system with registration of cases to ensure all cases are processed and all complaints heeded. The Criminal Procedural Law has been amended, so that an accused is assumed innocent until proven guilty and all illegal and doubtful evidence is rejected. The Civil Procedural Law has been revised, leading to the establishment of the public interest litigation system. The Administrative Procedural Law, too, has been amended to better protect citizens’ legal rights and interests.

The first Anti-Domestic Violence Law came into effect on March 1 last year. And the judicial authorities are now paying special attention to ensure detainees’ legal rights and interests are protected.

In 2015, the judicial and public security authorities issued regulations to protect lawyers’ rights and interests, stressing that the lawyers had the right to know, meet their clients, access files and apply for reviewing evidence, as well as the right to correspondence.

Protecting human rights according to the law is an important task on the way to building a society where the socialist rule of law is supreme.