The Theory Of Small Improvement Of The System Of Consumer Disputes In The Protection Of Consumers' Rights And Interests

With the vigorous development of market economy after the reform and opening up in China, the consumption market has become much more prosperous than ever before. Meanwhile, the micro-consumption disputes closely related to the public daily life occur on a large amount. From the macro perspective, the occurring of the micro-consumption disputes is frequent on time and extensive in space, and gradually evolves into the mass incidents and even livelihood issues which seriously affect the social stability. From the micro perspective, it’s severely disproportionate between the cost and effectiveness for consumers of micro-consumption deputes to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, and there is a deep gap between the parties of the disputes. And these peculiarities make special requirements to the resolution of the micro-consumption disputes. The current substantive law and the procedural law in China lack of the special protection to the consumers in micro-consumption disputes. And this deficiency specifically manifests in the impertinence of the rights safeguarding avenue, the punitive damages principle’making the loss outweighs the gain, the insufficiency of the procedural provisions, etc. Therefore, the consumer protection in micro-consumption disputes faces a grim situation, and the Consumer Protection Act urgently needs to be modified. Referring to the experience of other countries and regions, the writer puts forward proposals to improve Consumer Protection System in micro-consumption disputes in China as follows:1) to establish a minimum compensation system to motivate consumers to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, deprive of the illegal business operators’ unjust enrichment, punish the illegal business operators, and make the consumption safety guaranteed;2) to reduce the burden of proof of the consumers through the establishment of the principle of Onus Proof Conversi in micro-consumption area to transfer the burden of proof to the producers or the operators, and construction of a disputes identification fee waiver system or an advance payment of producers or the operators system to clear the concerns and obstacles on the fees and costs for consumers’ right safeguarding;3) to introduce Small Claims Procedure which is suitable to solve the micro-consumption disputes, including the building of specialized court and trial system for small claims, in order to reduce the litigation costs of the micro-consumption and improve the efficiency of hearing the small consumption cases.