Guest Lecture by Law Professor from Shantou University

17 March 2014

Guest Lecture

Speaker: Professor Qin Zhang, Law School, Shantou University

Time: 3pm, Wednsday, April 2nd

Location: Telus 233

Title: Administrative Dispute Resolution and Rule of Law in Contemporary China

Abstract:

Citizens and government are the parties involved in administrative disputes. This feature distinguishes itself from civil disputes, which usually take place between "equal parties" such as citizen, legal person or other organization. Because of the involvement of the government, the study of the administrative dispute resolution provides us with a unique opportunity to examine and evaluate the situation of rule of law in a given society and state.

This presentation will begin with a survey of the mechanism of administrative dispute resolution in contemporary China. This mechanism consists of four key components: mediation, petition system
(Xinfang), administrative reconsideration,and administrative litigation (judicial review). Its history and main feature of each component will be introduced respectively.

The second part of the presentation will focus on petition system, which gives people the channels to express their grievances in a letter and visits office. In addition to hearing grievances from people, letter and visits offices also supervise the exercise of power of the government. The petition system was created in the 1950s as part of the CCP's mass line ideology. However, in contemporary China because of the institutional weakness of the judiciary and the misplacement of the petition system itself, the petition system falls into the endless "letters and visits wave", which triggers more social problems.

The presentation will conclude with the argument that nowadays the fact that a large number of disputes flock to the petition system instead of the judiciary brings great pressure to the government, and has a negative impact on the judiciary and other dispute resolution channels. Resolving disputes through the petition system on the ad hoc base is undermining the rule of law principle, which is claimed rhetorically by the authority as the foundation of contemporary Chinese state and society.