Research On The Protection Of The Rural Consumer’s Rights And Interests

From the beginning of the history of human being, the underprivileged has been existing as a common social phenomenon. Undoubtedly, the consumer as a group is a typical example of the underprivileged due to its disadvantages in transaction arising from asymmetric information and relatively poor financial strength and etc. Also, the dual effects from historical and institutional factors contribute to the emergence of the largest underprivileged group in quantity—the farmer. Consequently, the rural consumer becomes the primary sub-group among the underprivileged group and is isolated far from the protection of rights and interests because of their double identity of consumer and farmer, their lawful rights and interests being damaged seriously but unable to be protected and remedied effectively.There are several reasons for the lack of rights and interest protection for the rural consumer. On one hand, their poor education and lack in law consciousness, weak economic strength make rural consumers incapable of protecting their own rights and interests; on the other hand, being short of self-disciplinary sense and social responsibility, often some business operators fail to perform their obligations properly and in full, which objectively damages the rural consumer’s rights and interests. To rival with the financially-strong business operator, the rural consumer must be united together to form a social group that can represent all their members. For the time being, however, the absence of consumer organization in the rural consumer market of China delivers no feasibility to safeguard the rural consumer’s legal rights by way of a consumer organization. The last protective screen is the law which the rural consumer places hope on to safeguard their rights and interests. Unfortunately, little attention given to their rights and interests in law making, laws concerned not being executed to the bottom by authorities, low efficiency in judicial remedy, these not only cause the law to fail in safeguarding the rural consumer’s rights and interests effectively, but further strengthen the rural consumer’s image as the underprivileged and worsen their situation. China has nearly eight hundred million fanners, approximately accounting for60%of its whole population. If these farmers’rights and interests as the rural consumer can not be protected effectively, the value aims of equity and justice which the economic law pursues will be impossible to be achieved. Now it is right the time for us to attach importance to and seek possible ways to solve these issues. The purpose of this article is to attempt to establish an overall, systematic, high-efficiency, feasible protection system of the rural consumer’s rights and interests, focusing on the protection of the rural consumer’s rights and interests.In order that the protection of the rural consumer’s rights and interests be effected practically, the self-protection of the rural consumer, the protection for the rural consumer’s rights and interests from the rural business operator and the consumer organization, the law of our state require to be integrated organically into an uniform harmonious rights and interests protection system. As regards the rural consumer’s self-protection, the emphasis of our efforts is placed on rebuilding and perfecting their status as subject of the right and, enabling them to finish the role transfer from being passively "weak and unwise" to being actively "strong and intelligent". As for the rural business operator, we must build up their self-disciplining consciousness and enhance their social responsibilities, make them actively perform their obligations under the law, thus creating a healthy consumption environment for the rural consumer. The absence of the consumer organization in the rural consumer market is inseparably due to, nowadays, our wrong definition of the nature, role of the consumer organization. Making the organization a nongovernmental one will effectively weaken its "color of being quasi-official", thus enabling the organization to become a real spokesman and protector of the rural consumer’s rights and interests. At the same time, the law protection should be the most important and strongest means to safeguard the rural consumer’s rights and interests, which is also a most crucial stage in the construction of the project of safeguarding the rural consumer’s rights and interests. Facing the present situations of insufficient protection by law, firstly, we shall make legislative improvement, expanding the scope of application of Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, adding to the kinds of consumer rights, intensifying punishment against these business operators who act in fraud; Secondly, law-executors shall form advanced concepts of law enforcement and be of clear contents and scope of obligations and duties of law enforcement. Improvement in the judicial protection of the rural consumer’s rights and interests mainly lies in the establishment of a series of target-oriented and high-efficiency, quick, convenient litigation pattern including consumption dispute arbitration, small claims or collective litigation. Only when the above quadruple protection means are integrated into a set of protection system of rural consumer’s rights and interests that interacts organically and operates efficiently can the harmonious rural consumption be truly realized.