Anhui upgrades public legal service system

East China's Anhui province has rolled out multiple measures to improve the quality and efficiency of its public legal service system so as to facilitate the province's high-quality development.

Anhui has established 123 public legal service centers at city and county levels, 1,527 workstations in towns, and 17,000 village and community studios. The province's public legal service hotline, 12348, and its government service hotline, 12345, now provide 24/7 services in a parallel way.

With improved online service function, the province's official online legal service website, "Public legal Service of Anhui", has handled 117,000 online appointments, orders and appeals in total. The four-level mediation network at county, township, community and grid levels has been improved, with 20,000 mediation organizations and over 100,000 people's mediators now available throughout the province.

The service chain has been further extended, with legal publicity being integrated into the public legal services. A program to cultivate legal savvy talents was carried out in villages and communities. To improve public awareness of the rule of law, the province has established 829 legal publicity and education bases and 2,395 law-themed public facilities. Over 17,000 primary and secondary schools province-wide have full-time or part-time vice-principals to strengthen rule of law education for young people.

As an endeavor to enhance informatization of its public legal services, the province has stepped up measures to promote internet plus public legal services such as online mediation, online legal aid applications and handling of notarial affairs via video link.  It also guided and supported various legal service institutions to make up the shortcomings of public legal services in rural areas.

The channels for public legal services become more smooth in the province. It has conducted themed campaign to support the high-quality development of enterprises with legal services such as notarial services and arbitration. Twenty-three information items regarding household registration and real estate have been collected and shared to promote notarial data sharing, with the data being shared 37, 000 times.

Furthermore, among its efforts to accelerate arbitration reform and innovation, the province has set up arbitration centers in the free trade zone commissions of Hefei, Bengbu and Wuhu.

Its Huangshan and Chizhou have been selected as pilot cities that integrate mediation and arbitration for tourism complaints in China. The provincial arbitration association and 16 arbitration commissions have been engaged in a regional multilateral cooperation mechanism for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta.