Promotion of Civil Code gains steam in Zhejiang

The judicial department of Zhejiang has joined two other provincial agencies in launching a law publicity campaign to promote China's first Civil Code, which was adopted by the country's top legislature in late May.

Promotion in various forms

Shortly after the enactment of the code, the lawyers' association in Hangzhou, the capital city, set up a Civil Code promotion team of 115 lawyers who actively publicized the code's contents in various forms including training sessions, lectures, forums and online teaching.

The public may choose whichever forms they like to learn about the code in much the same way they select dishes on a menu.

Law publicity for epidemic control

Just days after the COVID-19 epidemic broke out last January, Zhejiang became the first provincial region in China to launch an initiative calling on the public to observe the laws and regulations pertaining to epidemic prevention and control.

To implement the initiative, the province's judicial department opened a special online column to provide the public with free legal and psychological counseling.

Meanwhile, the foreign-related mediation committee in Yiwu, a foreign trade hub in the province, translated the regulations and policies about epidemic control into five foreign languages for foreign merchants who were doing business in the city.

Zhejiang has a prosperous private economy. In late March it started to shift its focus toward production resumption, and its judicial department and law publicity office jointly launched a month-long campaign to publicize regulations supporting the development of private enterprises.

During the campaign, the authorities held live-streamed lectures to explain to businesses the measures laid out in the regulation on such issues as market access, fair competition, risk prevention and protection of rights and interests. They also reached out to enterprises to assist them in addressing labor disputes.

Rural legal education

With the help of a variety of law publicity activities ranging from watching promotional videos to attending quizzes on legal knowledge, people in Zhejiang's rural areas, especially in the villages called demonstration villages for promoting democracy and rule of law, have shown growing interest in taking in legal information.

By pressing ahead with its three-year action plan for building such demonstration villages and communities, the province now has 149 national-level villages and communities of that kind, 2,121 provincial-level ones and 10,323 prefectural-level ones that have provided crucial legal support for rural revitalization.