Legal Protection Of The Right To Know Of Consumers In China

The approach of consumer ages makes market business model and principle of our country have occurred the profound change, the consumer rights had the guarantee of law and system. Due to various imperfect places, it makes the consumer sinking into the embarrass ground on the consuming road. The right to know of consumers is regarded as a basic right of consumer, it is the foundation that the right to life, the right to security which can be carried out smoothly. Legal protection of the right to know of consumers has important significance for protecting the consumer legal rights, upholding socialism market economy order and promoting market economy to develop healthily, so it has higher research value.This text is totally divided into four parts.The first part is the conception of the right to know of consumers.First of all, the writer analyzes the conception of the right to know of consumers. The right to know of consumers is the right that consumers know the true information for buying or using goods or accepting service. In our country, the specific provision of the right to know of consumers is made in the 8th article of the Protection Law of Consumers'Rights:"Consumers have the right to know the true information for the goods of buying or using and service of accepting ."Consumers have the right to request the trader to mark clearly the true information of merchandise or service they accept according to the law. When consumers purchase, use the merchandise or accept service, they have the right to inquire or understand about the relevant situation of the merchandise or service.Next, according to the conception of the right to know of consumers, the writer analyzes the connotation of the right to know of consumers. The writer thinks that the right to know of consumers has four meanings. Firstly, the right to know of consumers is a statutory right. Secondly, the right to know of consumers is the right that understands information of goods or services. Thirdly, the right to know of consumers is the right that the consumer acquires true and full information. Fourthly, the right to know of consumers requests traders to fulfill their obligation of providing information.Finally, the writer elaborates the production and development of the right to know of consumers. The right to know of consumers isn't the inherent right of the consumer, its creation and development have deep society, history and economic sources. The reasons which create mainly have some aspects. The first aspect is the information dissymmetry of consumers and merchants. This is the basic reason which produces the right to know of consumers. The second aspect is limitations of consumers themselves. The third aspect is the booming development of consumer sport. Since the beginning of 20 centuries, the right to know of consumers is always violated, which caused the property, healthy and life of consumer suffer from threat and injury. Hence, the consumer started to change the situation that they wait helplessly for the end, they opened the consumer protection sport for safeguarding their own interests, and they would take in to fight for making the right that acquire the information of merchandise and service as a basic right of consumer in the consumer protection sport, it obtained the approval of national law at the end. According to the above reason, American president Kennedy put forward four rights of consumers toward the national legislature for the first time in "Concerning Protection Consumer Benefits of President Special Union Address" on March 15, 1962. The first one is acquiring the right of the safe guarantee of merchandise. The second one is acquiring the right of right merchandise data. The third one is having the right of free choice to the merchandise. The third one is having the right to put forward opinions for consume things. Later on, other countries all prescribed the right to know of consumers in the related laws.The second part is the law protection of the right to know of consumers in china now. At this part, the writer introduced the guarantee condition of lawmaking at present firstly. For protecting the right to know of consumers, our country had enacted a series of related law, for example, Protection Law of Consumers'Rights, Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Advertisement Law, Price Law, etc. It completed the process that the law protection of the right to know of consumers in our country from scratch to mature gradually. In the meantime, traditional section method of our country—Civil Law, Penal Code also made related prescriptions toward the right to know of consumers. In the administrative enforcement, our country built up an administration system that all levels governments unified leadership, administration of Industry and Commerce department is regarded as the competent authority and other related sections are responsible separately for protecting the consumer rights. At the judicial aspect, the people's courts and people's procuratorates at all levels perform the obligation that protects the right to know of consumers within their respective mandates in our country.The third part is that the law protection of the right to know of consumers exist some problems in china.Firstly, the lawmaking concerning the right to know of consumers in our country has some shortages. Lack to legislative concerning the protection of foreign affairs the right to know of consumers. The system of punishment compensation has some problems. The dispute settlement mechanism of the right to know of consumers is short of practicable manipulate function. Proof responsibility allotment in the dispute of the right to know of consumers unbalances.Secondly, the strength of the administration enforces the law is not ample. The first one is lacking the specialized, authority consumer rights protection organization. The second one, the administration protection for consumer right is more passive. The third one, the administration organizations only pays attention to manage the merchant, but it neglected the service to the consumer now. The fourth one, the administration organization and its law enforcement lack of consciousness for protecting the consumer.Ultimately, there are shortcomings in the judiciary system. Firstly, judicial relief costs over high. Secondly, the court trial procedures are too complicated and last a long time, the efficiency of the proceedings is also low.The fourth part is about perfecting measures of the law protection of the right to know of consumers in our country.Although the law protection of the right to know of consumers of our country has already become the system, but it still exist various shortages objectively. So our country should further strengthen the law protection of the right to know of consumers from the following aspects.For the first aspect, it should perfect the lawmaking of the right to know of consumers. It should begin from the following some points. The first one is clearing the operator's mandatory information disclosure obligations and liabilities. The second point is emendating the rule of punishment indemnification of the 49th in Protection Law of Consumers'Rights. The third point is establishing the consumer dispute settlement mechanism that manipulates strongly and has muli-channel. The fourth point is relocating proof responsibility again in the right to know of consumers dispute cases.For the second aspect, we should develop the function of government agency abundantly at protecting the right to know of consumers. Firstly, we should establish specialized consumer protection organizations. Secondly, we may raise governmental information service level and lead consumes behavior reasonably. Thirdly, we can perfect enforce the law and supervision system. Finally, we may strengthen executive team-building that protecting the interests of consumers agencies.At last, we can reduce the cost of judicial relief and improve efficiency of judicial proceedings. At present, in China's judicial practice, it has not established the judicial protection which simple, convenient, low-cost and suiting consumer protection feature. Usually the case takes up much time to judge, leading to a great deal of waste which manpower, material resources and financial power. The consumer pays a bigger litigation cost, then usually they are "won the lawsuit but lose money" or used money to return a verdict of worthless. Therefore, reducing the cost of judicial relief and improving efficiency of judicial proceedings are the basic measures of perfecting litigation mechanism, it is also the valid method which encourages consumer litigation enthusiasm. But the consumer rights is a kind of dispersion and weak right, it is very difficult to carry on valid protection only by depending on our country's traditional judicial law. Therefore, we should consider special nature of consumer dispute, draw lessons from the advanced experience of other countries and areas and set up the valid consumer judicatory system. For instance, we can establish small sum litigation court or small sum litigation procedure and extend the plaintiff qualifications in the consuming dispute, build up consuming public interest litigation system, etc.