China News Agency, Beijing, July 1st Question: What is the new trend of China's "civilian accusers"?

　　China News Service reporter Zhang Su

　　From the ancient "barriers to raise grievances" to today's administrative litigation legal system, China's "civilian accuser" has changed from time to time. What provisions will the "Supreme People's Court Provisions on Several Issues for the Responsible Persons of the Heads of Administrative Organs Appear in Court", which come into effect on July 1, 2020, bring about new phenomena for "civil officials"?

　　"This judicial interpretation will have a positive impact on advancing strict regulation of civilized law enforcement, promoting substantive resolution of administrative disputes, and advancing the administrative trial work of the people's court." Huang Yongwei, President of the Administrative Trial Division of the Supreme People's Court of China, said.

　　As he said, the outside world hopes that this judicial interpretation will further solve the problem of "losing officials but not seeing officials" in administrative litigation cases.

　　Recalling that in 1987, the Administrative Legislation Research Group began to draft a draft administrative litigation law. Jiang Mingan, a member of the research group and a professor at the Peking University Law School, said that the draft was met with opposition from many localities and departments when seeking comments. The "civilian sue officials" system, "the central government finally stated that China will change from doing things according to policies to administrating according to laws, and administration according to law must be guaranteed by the system of "civil sue officials."

　　On April 4, 1989, the Second Session of the Seventh National People's Congress passed the Administrative Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China. A year before the promulgation of this law, a farmer in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, sued the Cangnan County People's Government, and the county magistrate, Huang Deyu, appeared in court to answer the case. It is recognized as the first case in which the executive head appeared in court since the founding of New China.

　　Since then, the legislative and judicial departments have promoted “officials in court to respond to complaints” through many explorations, especially marked by the newly revised Administrative Procedure Law passed at the 11th meeting of the 12th NPC Standing Committee on November 1, 2014. This is to formally establish the system of responding to the complaint by the person in charge of the administrative organ in the case of "civilian accuser" in the form of legislation. The Supreme Law has also perfected this system, clarifying that “responsible persons” include both official and deputy positions, and further expand the scope of persons in charge of administrative agencies.

　　However, Huang Yongwei admitted that the ratio of the person in charge in court in judicial practice is not high as a whole, and some administrative agencies do not understand and do not cooperate with court to respond to complaints from time to time. Jiang Ming'an analyzed the reasons and said that some of the person in charge felt "shame" when responding to the court, some of the person in charge were not strong enough in law, and were afraid to say the wrong thing when appearing in court.

　　The new regulations that came into effect on July 1 will once again expand the scope of the "person in charge of administrative organs" moderately. Jiang Mingan believes that the unclear scope will lead to mutual exclusion. The new judicial interpretation will include "the person in charge of the deputy level involved in the implementation of the administrative action of the respondent", which can better ensure the operation of the system of responding to the complaint.

　　"Seeing officials" focuses on substantive resolution of administrative disputes. He Haibo, a professor at the School of Law of Tsinghua University, believes that if there is a problem with the administrative behavior during the litigation process, if the person in charge of the administrative organ is present and understands the whole situation, it will help "the voluntary withdrawal of the withdrawal, the urgent performance of the performance, and the full amount of the compensation. Compensation".

　　Judging from the data, many new court cases of "private accusers" continue to rise, but it is still more difficult to resolve administrative disputes in substance. In 2019, the provincial courts in Yunnan Province received 4,300 first-instance administrative cases and 2,256 in second-instance administrative cases, up 6.12% and 22.74% year-on-year respectively. However, the appeal rate and retrial rate are higher, and the withdrawal rate is not high. In the past year, the courts in Shanxi Province handled a total of 8,570 administrative litigation cases, an increase of 6.6% year-on-year. The trial of administrative compensation and compensation cases accounted for 12.69%, which also reflects the “increasing difficulty of hearing administrative cases in people’s courts”.

　　In order to avoid that the person in charge of the administrative organ "should not be heard in court and not respond to the complaint", the new regulations implemented from July 1 also made institutional arrangements, clarifying that "the person in charge of court should have a certain degree of decision-making authority over the matter involved in the complaint", requiring "The person in charge should express an opinion on the substantive settlement of administrative disputes."

　　The above-mentioned experts also noticed that there is an imbalance in the development of the heads of administrative organs in courts to respond to litigation, and the abuse of the right of litigation by a few parties is more prominent. In 2019, all the administrative cases of the courts in Huai'an City, Jiangsu Province were centralized under the jurisdiction of the Qingjiangpu District Court. The court filed multiple administrative proceedings against the party Zhang Moumou within a short period of time, and without any justified reasons, the court ruled to dismiss the lawsuit. 17 cases regulated the abuse of the right to sue.

　　The newly implemented judicial interpretation clarifies the types of cases that the court can notify the person in charge to appear in court. He Haibo reminded that the promotion of administrative officials to appear in court should mainly rely on the mobilization and evaluation of party and government organs. The law should not be excessively compulsory or even "one size fits all." (Finish)