On May 22, the draft of the Civil Code was submitted to the Third Session of the 13th National People's Congress for deliberation, which means that after deliberation by the NPC deputies, the Civil Code will soon come out after "running" the last legislative process. The Seventh Part plus Supplementary Provisions, 84 Chapters, 1260 Articles, and a total of more than 100,000 words ... As the law with the largest number of articles in China to date-the Civil Code will be the only law named after the founding of New China .
This civil code known as the "Encyclopedia of Social Life" has every clause in the draft that is closely related to every citizen: birth and death, food, clothing, housing, transportation, consumer loans, marriage and family, production and life ... from "cradle to grave", this The code of Bu Hong's great system and the protection of civil rights has become a declaration of civil rights capitalized in the new era.
Since it was first drafted in 1954, the Civil Code has been promoted by several generations of legal persons for more than sixty years. Sitting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, looking at this heavy draft code, Sun Xianzhong, a member of the National People ’s Congress, a member of the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People ’s Congress, and a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was deeply moved. The promulgation of the Civil Security Code will surely profoundly affect everyone's life, and it will vigorously promote the modernization of the country's governance system and governance capabilities, becoming a milestone of the rule of law in China's new era.
The biggest highlight is the provision of civil rights
Before the founding of New China in 1949 and before the reform and opening up in 1978, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress twice drafted a civil code, which was terminated due to the special historical situation at that time.
In 1978, in Xiaogang Village, Fengyang County, Anhui Province, 18 farmers signed a "life-death contract" for contracting production to households, and China's reform and opening began. The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China determined the mission objectives of promoting socialist democracy and improving the socialist legal system. China has entered a period of speeding up the construction of the legal system, and the public's legal consciousness and rights consciousness are constantly increasing. The progress of the times and economic and social development have injected vitality and vitality into the restoration of civil law.
In August 1979, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress formed a drafting group, and the third draft of the Civil Code kicked off. By May 1982, the fourth draft of the Civil Law (Draft) was completed. The "Civil Code" was not drafted.
In Sun Xianzhong's view, the civil code was not compiled at that time, because China's economic system reform had just started, and the civil law society had not yet been established. "In the early 1980s, young people got married and engaged to report to the organization and sign a contract. The establishment of an economic organization and other activities were considered to be state-based behavior at the time and required organization approval." Sun Xianzhong said.
Wang Hanbin, then director of the Legal Work Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, made a special explanation. He said: "Because the civil law involves a wide range and is very complex, the economic system reform has just begun, we still lack experience, and the conditions for formulating a complete civil code are not yet mature."
The good news is that the drafting of the Civil Code has spawned a series of legislative achievements in the civil field. The most notable of these is the "General Rules of the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China" that came into effect on January 1, 1987.
Jurist Wang Jiafu commented that the formulation of the "General Principles of Civil Law" meets the needs of reform and opening up and building a socialist country. According to Jiang Ping, a jurist and a tenured professor at China University of Political Science and Law, the biggest advantage of the General Principles of Civil Law is that it stipulates civil rights. In one class, he told the students the general rules of civil law. He talked for 8 hours, and the students took more than 70 pages of notes.
In the 1980s, there was a debate in the legal community around whether to enact a separate civil law or a civil code. Peng Zhen, then chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was finalized. He said that China's economic system is undergoing reforms, and it may be difficult to formulate a complete civil code and the conditions are not mature. I am afraid that the "retail" method needs to be adopted. According to the actual needs, it is mature to formulate one.
This legislative idea of "retail first, then wholesale" establishes a staged and stepped implementation strategy for the formulation of China's Civil Code. In addition to the general rules of civil law, contract law, property law, tort liability law, intellectual property legislation, commercial legislation, etc., became the successor of this civil law legislative activity, laying a solid foundation for the compilation of civil code.
Sun Xianzhong believes that the "General Principles of Civil Law" has two major historical achievements: first, it is clear that the property relationship and personal relationship between equal subjects belong to civil law adjustment; second, it is confirmed that civil subjects enjoy broad civil rights. He cited, for example, that in the Civil Rights Regulations of the General Rules of Civil Law, eight legal provisions were used to specify personal rights, and that personal rights could stand side by side with property rights, creditor's rights, and intellectual property rights. There is no such precedent for civil codes that have had a significant impact in the world, whether it is the French Civil Code or the German Civil Code.
"Equality, voluntariness, fairness, equal pay, honesty and credibility are the basic principles of civil activities established in the General Principles of Civil Law, and have now become the basic principles of modern civil activities in China. , Partnerships, state-owned enterprise legal persons, collective enterprise legal persons, breach of contract liability, tort liability and other basic rights relief systems, etc., have played an inestimable role in the smooth transformation of China's economy. "Sun Xianzhong said," equality subject "was written in "General Principles of Civil Law", no matter whether it is a public-owned enterprise or a private enterprise, can have an equal position in the market economy. Only then will China's economy develop vigorously for more than 30 years.
Take a critical step
With the development of society and the progress of the times, the "General Principles of Civil Law", as a transitional law that inherits the past, gradually fails to meet the needs of economic and social development.
Sun Xianzhong explained that most of the 156 articles of the General Principles of Civil Law were replaced by other laws and eliminated by history. "For example, the provisions of the legal person system are replaced by the company law, the enterprise law, etc., the property rights are replaced by the property rights law, and the civil liability part is replaced by the tort liability law, etc., only about ten provisions can continue to be effective and become Empty phenomenon '. "
In 1998, the drafting of the Civil Code was again put on the agenda. In 2002, the Legislative Affairs Organ of the National People's Congress compiled the "Civil Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft)". Due to the difficulty of unifying the opinions of various parties, the legislative plan was stranded and returned to the model of gradually formulating a single law.
At this time, a serious problem is coming: Does China still need to formulate a civil code?
In Sun Xianzhong's view, the history of world civil legislation shows that the Civil Code is a declaration of people's rights and a milestone in the development of the rule of law. The civil codes of France, Germany and other countries with worldwide influence were formulated during the critical period of national rejuvenation, social transformation and the rise of the country.
Compiling a civil code with Chinese characteristics in the new era will solve the long-standing problem of China's civil law legislation that is scattered and contains major contradictions and defects.
At the first meeting of the 12th National People's Congress held in 2013, Sun Xianzhong, a representative of the National People's Congress, submitted a proposal to "Revise the General Principles of Civil Law as the General Principles of Civil Law and Integrate the Civil Law Legislation System into the Civil Code." Subsequently, he submitted five bills concerning the codification of the Civil Code for four consecutive years. Sun Xianzhong remembered, "After I introduced the motion on codifying the civil code, more than 30 deputies to the National People's Congress came to sign it on the day, which shows how exciting the codification of the civil code is."
In October 2014, the Fourth Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues for Promoting the Rule of Law in an All-round Way", which specifically proposed "strengthening the construction of market legal systems and codifying civil codes."
"The 'Civil Code' and the 'Compiled Civil Code' were first proposed in the history of the Communist Party of China. Since then, the compilation of the Civil Code has begun." Sun Xianzhong said that the integration of a single civil law in the draft civil code will use the The systematic effect makes up for defects and eliminates contradictions, and is expected to solve a series of legislative, law enforcement and judicial issues that have been in China's civil legal system for decades.
The highest legislature has determined the working idea of "two steps" to compile the civil code. The first step is to compile the general code of the civil code, that is, the "general rules of the civil law"; the second step is to compile the civil code.
In 2016, the general rules for the formulation of civil law were included in the legislative work plan of the NPC Standing Committee. This year, Wei Zhenying, an 83-year-old jurist and one of the founders of Chinese civil law, wrote a dense outline, which read: "What kind of general rules of civil law do we need". On March 15, 2017, the Fifth Session of the Twelfth National People's Congress reviewed and passed the "General Principles of Civil Law", and the compilation of the Civil Code took a landmark first step.
Public opinion and voice in 1.02 million opinions
On August 27, 2018, the drafts of each subsection of the Civil Code were first submitted to the 5th meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee for review, including six sections, namely, property rights, contract, personality rights, marriage and family, inheritance Editing, tort liability editing, a total of 1034 articles. This marks a groundbreaking second step in the compilation of our national code.
On December 23, 2019, the "Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (Draft)", composed of the general provisions of the Civil Law and the drafts of the Civil Code, was submitted to the 15th meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee for review The draft was unveiled for the first time.
Codification of the civil code requires both "codification" and "codification". In the past five years, the Civil Code has been compiled for public comment 10 times, and more than 425,600 people have participated in providing opinions, with a total of 1.02 million articles.
The people have something to say, the law has to adapt. The draft of the Civil Code has responded to many issues that the public reflected strongly.
The independent compilation of personality rights is the highlight of the draft civil code. Personality rights are the most important declaration of rights for the masses of the people. They are related to the most basic and most important rights of civil subjects, and are related to the dignity of everyone. Incorporating the right of personality independently and establishing a prohibition system infringing on the right of personality are the implementation of the constitutional requirements of "citizen's personal dignity is not infringed", which embodies the people-centered development thinking and makes up for China's civil legislation There were some legislative flaws in the "emphasis on people". As a pioneering work of the Chinese Civil Code, the personality rights series shines with the capital “person”. It is the solemn confirmation and strict protection of the citizens ’personal rights by the rule of law in China. It can be regarded as a Chinese plan for the contribution of the world ’s personal rights to the protection of the rule of law.
In Sun Xianzhong's view, a special chapter in the draft personality code of the Civil Code: privacy rights and personal information protection, defining the scope of privacy rights, adopting public opinions, continuously expanding and upgrading the scope of personal information protection, is "to respond to the broadest masses of people It is an important embodiment of legal civilization to establish the right to privacy for the desire and demand for the protection of private rights such as privacy. "
Reading the draft civil code, a college student noticed that the words "private life and tranquility" appeared in this big code.
Cheng Xiao, deputy dean of the School of Law of Tsinghua University, said that in a modern society, "private life in peace" is the most important "welfare benefit" for an individual, an important part of a person's happy life, and an important livelihood issue. The draft Civil Code recognizes that private life tranquillity is an important part of privacy. In response to the behavior of others sending spam messages and spam emails to infringe on the privacy of private life, the draft Personal Rights Code of the Civil Code specifically stipulates the types of violations of privacy rights in the privacy section, and Clearly stipulate the security of personal private life in the right of privacy, prohibit illegal entry, peeping, and photographing other people's homes, hotel rooms, and other private spaces, illegally photographing, recording, publicizing, peeping, and eavesdropping on others' private activities, illegally photographing and peeping at others The private parts of the body help to ensure the stability and order of social life.
"The current China is at the historical confluence of the 'two hundred years' struggle goals. The rule of law is urgently needed to play a solid, stable, and long-term governance role, and the civil code is just in time." Sun Xianzhong said.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Wang Yijun Ma Yuping Source: China Youth Daily
May 05, 2020 Edition 05