Zhou Shangjun: Building a Higher-Level Socialist State under the Rule of Law
On January 10, 2025, General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a letter to the Ninth National Membership Representative Congress of the China Law Society, expressing his expectations for the broad masses of legal scholars and practitioners. Building a higher-level socialist rule-of-law country is a powerful guarantee for further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese-path modernization; it is also an inevitable requirement for continuing to improve and develop the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and for advancing the modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance.
Achievements and Experiences in Building a Rule-of-Law China in the New Era
First, persisting in the Party's leadership over the comprehensive rule of law [1]. Persisting in the Party's leadership is the primary experience behind the historic new achievements in building a rule-of-law China in the New Era. The remarkable results achieved in the construction of a rule-of-law China fully manifest the political advantages of the Party's leadership. In recent years, the mechanisms through which the Party leads legislation, guarantees law enforcement, supports the judiciary, and takes the lead in observing the law have gradually taken shape, ensuring that the Party's leadership is implemented throughout the entire process and in all aspects of governing the country according to law. The rule-of-law leadership mechanism—through which the Party exercises overall leadership and coordinates all parties—has become increasingly refined, driving all sectors, links, and fields to strive toward the goals of rule-of-law construction. On Chinese soil, this has successfully opened up a new paradigm of "autonomous" [2] rule-of-law modernization, distinct from "endogenous" or "transplanted" models, creating a new form of human legal civilization.
Second, persisting in the principle that the rule of law is for the people and relies on the people. The people are the creators of history and the fundamental force behind the comprehensive rule of law. Our country has formulated and amended the Constitution, formed and continuously improved the system of socialist laws with Chinese characteristics, enhanced legal authority, and strengthened legal implementation, striving to let the people feel fairness and justice in every legal system, every law enforcement decision, and every judicial case. The full play of the people's role as the subject and the source of power for governing the country according to law has powerfully promoted our country's rule-of-law construction.
Third, persisting in the unity of reform and the rule of law. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, our country has persisted in the unity of reform and the rule of law, advancing reform under the rule of law and refining the rule of law amidst reform.
The Supervision Law, enacted in 2018 and amended in 2024, fixed the new concepts, measures, and experiences of the reform of the national supervision system since the 18th National Congress into legal form, innovating and refining the national supervision legal system. The Civil Code, completed in 2020, systematically integrated the civil legal norms formed through long-term practice over the 70-plus years since the founding of the People's Republic; it embodies a profound national spirit, highlights a clear people-centered philosophy, and is hailed as the "encyclopedia of social life." The Organic Law of the State Council, revised in 2024, reflects the spirit and achievements of deepening the reform of Party and state institutions through legal provisions, further improving the organizational and working systems of the State Council, and providing a solid rule-of-law guarantee for building a law-based, innovative, clean, and service-oriented government that satisfies the people.
Fourth, persisting in the integration of Core Socialist Values into the rule of law. Core Socialist Values are the soul of socialist rule-of-law construction.
In May 2018, the CPC Central Committee issued the Plan for Integrating Core Socialist Values into the Legislation and Amendment of Laws and Regulations, emphasizing the need to "focus on integrating Core Socialist Values into the entire process of establishing, amending, abolishing, and interpreting [3] laws and regulations." In 2018, the phrase "advocating Core Socialist Values" was written into the Constitution. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee explicitly proposed the major proposition of "improving the legal and policy system for promoting Core Socialist Values," pointing the way toward using the law to promote the construction of Core Socialist Values. The 20th National Congress further proposed to "persist in combining the rule of law with the rule of virtue, and integrate Core Socialist Values into rule-of-law construction, social development, and daily life."
Fifth, persisting in building a high-quality workforce of rule-of-law personnel possessing both professional competence and moral integrity. In recent years, under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, major achievements have been made in the construction of the rule-of-law workforce. The proportion of judges and prosecutors with legal backgrounds and undergraduate degrees or higher both exceed 95%. The number of lawyers has increased from 300,000 to 725,000 over the past decade. The legal education system has become more refined, training and supplying more than 100,000 specialized legal talents annually. A socialist rule-of-law workforce loyal to the Party, the country, the people, and the law has been built, and a political and legal affairs workforce [4] that is "politically upright, professionally competent, responsible, disciplined, and possessing a strong work style" has been forged, providing a powerful organizational and talent guarantee for the comprehensive rule of law and the construction of a higher-level socialist rule-of-law country.
Key Tasks for Building a Higher-Level Socialist Rule-of-Law Country
First, persist in ideological guidance, formulate systematic planning, and conduct precise evaluations to improve the scientific level of building a rule-of-law China. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, the construction of a rule-of-law China is gradually forming a scientific planning mechanism that applies holistic knowledge to the goal-oriented governance of public affairs. We must profoundly grasp the systemic, holistic, and synergistic nature of reforms in all fields and aspects of the rule of law. We must persist in the coordinated promotion of reforms in domestic and foreign-related rule of law, integrally advance the reform of mechanisms for building a rule-of-law country, government, and society, and synergistically advance reforms in the links of legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, and law observance to continuously improve the system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics. We must further build a scientific, rational, and highly operational indicator system for evaluating the performance of rule-of-law construction, making its effectiveness concrete and visible, thereby providing a scientific basis for assessing the true state of rule-of-law construction, evaluating its actual efficacy, and refining its institutional mechanisms.
Second, enhance the quality of legislation, improve the legal system, and optimize the supply of institutions to improve the standardization level of building a rule-of-law China. To build a higher-level socialist rule of law, we must further deepen reform in the legislative field and guarantee high-quality development with high-quality legislation. We should promptly confirm the achievements of further comprehensively deepening reform in various fields through the establishment, amendment, abolition, and interpretation of laws and regulations. We must strengthen legislation in key, emerging, and foreign-related areas, paying attention to the new requirements placed on the legal system by new business formats, emerging elements, and new types of rights within the context of new quality productive forces. We should actively advance legislation in important areas such as national security, technological innovation, public health, biosafety, ecological civilization, and risk prevention, improving the legal systems necessary to meet the people's growing needs for a better life, and guaranteeing the healthy development of new business formats and models through good laws and good governance.
Third, broadly solicit public opinion, alleviate the people's concerns, and promote governance by and for the people to improve the socialization level of building a rule-of-law China. When formulating economic and social policies or launching major reform measures closely related to the people's production, life, and practical interests, we must smooth the channels for public participation in major public decision-making and extensively listen to the opinions of the masses. We must respond to the people's demand for fairness and justice at a higher level, correctly handle the balance between the efficiency requirements of reform and the pursuit of fairness in the rule of law, and further improve the social fairness and justice guarantee system, which primarily consists of fairness in rights, opportunities, and rules. We must establish mechanisms for the masses to supervise and evaluate, promoting continuous improvement in the intensity and effectiveness of law enforcement in key areas affecting the people's immediate interests, such as food and drugs, public health, the ecological environment, production safety, and labor security. We must accelerate the reform and development of industries such as legal services, notarization, arbitration, and forensic appraisal, improve the management and working mechanisms of public legal services, and promote the standardization and precision of public legal services to effectively meet the people's growing demand for high-quality, diversified legal services.
Fourth, strengthen technological innovation, enrich application scenarios, and deepen digital-intelligence empowerment to improve the intelligence level of building a rule-of-law China. We must comprehensively promote the digital transformation of rule-of-law China through digital cognition, thinking, and technology. We should utilize informatized and intelligent means such as big data and artificial intelligence to drive innovation in work concepts and methods, achieving the precise supply of legal services, enhancing the intelligence and refinement of rule-of-law China, and continuously injecting technological power into its construction. We must accelerate legislation in fields such as the digital economy, internet finance, artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing. We should promote the deep integration of technological innovations like big data and AI with judicial work, refining the "Internet + Litigation" model, strengthening litigation service facilities, and comprehensively building a modern litigation service system that is intensive, efficient, capable of diversified dispute resolution, convenient, intelligent, precise, open, interactive, and characterized by shared integration. Finally, we must strengthen the construction of the three major platforms for public legal services—physical, hotline, and online—to promote the deep integration of public legal services with technological innovation, aiming to complete a public legal service network covering all business areas and all times and spaces as soon as possible.
(This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund of China Major Project "Research on Comprehensively Improving the Level of Rule of Law in Social Governance" [23ZDA080]) (The author is a Professor and Vice President of Southwest University of Political Science and Law) Source: Chinese Social Sciences Net – China Social Sciences Today Online Editor: Huihui