Studies On Legal System Of Administrative Divisions In China: Problems, Defects And Improvement

As one important component of our country's form of state structure, administrative divisions involve decentralization of power, adjustment of resources and all kinds of interests. Because of administrative divisions' great importance to our country, we must use legal methods to regulate it and guide it to the way of standardization, legalization, scientization. To realize the legalization of administrative divisions is the inner demand of our country's democracy, rule-of-law and constitutionalism. However, our country's legal system of administrative divisions has many defects, which need to be improved urgently.This thesis has three parts, that is, introduction, main body and epilogue. The introduction includes the purpose and method of writing this thesis and the frame of this thesis. The first part of the main body chooses three typical problems involved in our country's administrative divisions, that is, the problems of the area-level city leadership system, blindly setup of cities and towns, the conflict between administrative region and economic region. The purpose is to show that the leadership of counties and the county-level cities of the cities besides large cities have no constitutional basis, that blindly setup of cities and towns doesn't accord with law, and that the conflict between administrative region and economic region has no legal basis. The reason why there exist such problems is that the legal system of our country's administrative divisions has many defects.The second part of the main body points out that the defects of the legal system of our country's administrative divisions mainly include three aspects, that is, the defects of constitution, administrative law and standards of the setup of cities and towns having no legal basis. The third part of the main body raises the countermeasures against these defects, that is, to amend the constitution and enact the law of administrative divisions. To express them in details; the constitution should be amended in two aspects, that is, to make it constitutional the status of the leadership of counties and the county-level cities of the cities besides large cities and amend the limits of authority of the setup of provinces, cites, etc. The authority power should be given to the People's Congress and its standing committee and let administrative apartments take care of the task of management and performance. The future law of administrative divisions should emphasize three aspects. First, it should strictly regulate the process of the alteration of administrative divisions, including giving the power of examining and approving of setting, discharging of the units of local authority to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and the provincial levels instead of the State Council and provincial governments. It should make sure the words used are clear and normative in order to make the practice of administrative divisions much easier. It should listen to the opinions of people living in the regions which are to be adjusted. Second, it should clearly provide substantive qualifications of the setting and alteration of administrative divisions. Because the setting of administrative divisions involves re-decentralization of power and re-adjustment of resources, it is of great importance to provide clearly the standards of the setting of administrative divisions. Other alteration of administrative divisions refers to the alteration of administrative regions' boundaries and subordinate relations. Third, it should also provide clearly legal responsibilities, including the actions, bodies that should assume legal responsibility, its categories and discretion. The epilogue simply summarizes the thesis and advances some problems which need further study.