Anhui makes strides in advancing overall law-based provincial governance

The judicial administration of East China's Anhui province has been earnestly performing its duties in administrative legislation, administrative law enforcement, enforcement of criminal penalties and public legal services, making rule of law the cornerstone of the province's high-quality development. 

Optimizing legislative work 

To advance the administrative legislation in a scientific, democratic and transparent way, Anhui's judicial department explored, among other measures, introduction of legislative consultants, law enforcement supervisors and grassroots contact workstations for government legislative matters. 

So far, it has appointed 93 legislative consultants and 55 law enforcement supervisors, and has set up 10 contact workstations. 

Meanwhile, it has also improved legislation in important areas such as environmental protection and people's livelihoods, promulgating 37 local regulations and taking the lead in formulating 20 provincial-level governmental rules including one on optimizing the province's business environment. 

The department has also rolled out the legality review mechanism for regulatory documents with which it has reviewed more than 1,900 major matters of the provincial government, and suggested the repeal of 1,829 rules and regulatory documents. 

Building law-based government 

As part of its effort to build a law-based government, the department carried out in-depth reform of its administrative approval system, making Anhui the first province in the country to implement a list of powers and responsibilities in governments at all the four levels. Adjusted every year, the list was streamlined from 1,406 items to 1,343 in 2019, with the number of matters subject to administrative approval also being reduced from 197 to 192. 

Meanwhile, Anhui was among the earliest provinces releasing a guideline on online government services. So far, the services are accessible at all the five administrative levels from province to village. 

The department has also been constantly improving its administrative decision-making mechanism, subjecting all the major decisions of the provincial government to the legality review. In addition, every county-level government has been equipped with a legal counsel. 

Improving public legal services 

The department has been making persistent efforts to build an all-round legal service network including services ranging from lawyers to people's mediation. 

It has, so far, established 123 public legal service centers, 1,512 township and sub-district-level workstations, and 13,945 studios in villages and communities. In addition, 17,542 villages and communities have had access to legal counsel services. 

Anhui is also the second province in China to launch the "12348" legal consulting hotline through which people can get basic legal services for free. 

Apart from the hotline, people can also get legal services at over 3,000 online stores in the province's official public legal service website, or ah.12348.gov.cn. 

Carrying forward the Fengqiao Experience, the department has also been striving to upgrade people's mediation. In the past two years, mediation organizations across the province handled more than 1.1 million disputes of various types.