Consumers' Right To Know

Nowadays the society is becoming more and more concerned about consumers' protection rights which, as an important component of the basic human rights, is the right that consumers have to know the true information of the goods bought and used or the service received.The right to know, as a category concept, is composed of a series of sub-rights. There is a typical opinion to divide it into the right to know policy, the right to know the facts of society and the right to know information of a person. The main content of consumers' right includes that the consumers have the right to be informed about the true facts of the goods or service which the seller is obliged to provide according to law regulations, it also includes that consumers have the right to inquire the information about the goods and services and after-sale service.Consumers' right has it unique characteristics. First of all, the right subject of consumer's right should be, and should only be, the consumer.Secondly, the obligation subject of consumer's right is the manufacturer and seller.Thirdly, the object of consumer's right is specific, that is, the consumer only has the right to know the true facts about the exact goods that the consumer is preparing to buy or has bought and services that he accepts.Last but not the least, there are special requirements on time span for consumer's right, the consumer has the right only when he buys or uses the goods or receives the services.In any business transactions, the consumer's right is very important because it can make up for the information-imbalance in the process of selling and buying, it can improve the economy and reduce transaction risks.Consumer's right, as one of the rights to know the facts of society, also has its own limitations. In most cases there is the conflict between consumer's rights and business secrecy. Consumer's right aims at protecting consumer's legal rights, it is a special protection for the consumer who is in the weaker position during thetransaction process, which embodies the value of civil and commercial law to protect the weaker side. While business secrecy is to protect the business operator's competition on the basis of equality, which embodies fairness and efficiency in the market economy. So it involves the balance between business secrecy and consumer's rights, which should be approached through legislation, for example, to list the content of consumer's rights in legislation; to clarify the content of business secrecy; to design measures to limit the protection of business secrecy against public interests; to exert other legislatives' influence on consumer's rights and business secrecy.At present, the legal provisions in our country for consumers' rights are centralized in the Law on the Protection of Consumers' Rights and Interests. Besides, there are other laws and regulations such as the Law Against Competition by Inappropriate Means, Advertising Law and Law on Product Quality, all stating some of consumers' rights. Although consumers' rights have been comprehensively regulated in some laws, there are still some shortcomings and defects, in some cases consumers' rights are still being infringed upon. It should be improved through legislation, especially in material laws and procedural laws.As the society develops, certain consumers' rights are becoming more crucial in recent years, for instance, education consumers' rights, trans-gene foods consumers and e-commerce consumers' rights and so on.