On the right track to the rule of law

While covering Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Europe last week, I took a break from my tight schedule and went on a whistle-stop tour of some of the many attractions in Rome. And I was taken in by the ruins of a court lying quietly in the city.

The place is a waste, in sharp contrast to the grand but somber Colosseum. Beyond the iron bars to keep off curious visitors, weather-beaten stones and broken sections of finely sculpted pillars lay asymmetrically aligned on the dusty floor, reflecting the lost dignity of the court. A small notice board standing lonely tells the modern world that the relics belong to a place where civil disputes were settled and legal documents were archived in the days of the Roman Republic.

All of a sudden, the pile of relics seemed to come alive, rising even higher than the archways of the Colosseum. The place in front of me was a transcultural legacy of the republic.

Roman law was one of the few things that celebrated the republic long after its fall. The Law of the Twelve Tables, completed around 450 BC, was the ancient legislation that formed the foundation of Roman law, a predecessor of the statutes of most countries, including China.

The clauses in the Law of the Twelve Tables were far from perfect; they were apparently partial toward aristocrats. But the Roman law inscribed, for the first time, a sequence of definitions of various private rights and procedures, making arbitrary interpretation of laws by aristocrats almost impossible.

The ruins of the ancient Roman court reminded me that China is on its way to establishing the rule of law. The country still does not have a civil code, and all civil disputes are settled according to the General Provisions of the Civil Law, a much simpler version of the stipulations that does not include important codes such as the Real Rights Law and the Contract Law. Despite China's increasing interaction with the rest of the world, something important is still missing.

The premier's Europe visit, which also took him to Germany and Russia, was crammed with meetings with government leaders and signing of business deals with astronomical figures. China has become the top purchaser of the products made by many foreign countries and it is the largest exporter of consumer goods. It would thus be good to see the experiences gained by China from these exchanges go beyond the realm of business. These experiences must also forge "innovative partnership", as Chinese leaders have put it, and dig deeper into the institutional treasury to nurture the spirit of citizenship, help establish the rule of law and develop open-mindedness toward arts and literature.

China, fortunately, has been tackling these issues and is expected to resolve many of them soon. It has abolished the highly controversial system of laojiao, which could put people into forced labor without facing trial. It is dismantling the hukou (household registration) system, implemented in the second half of last century that divided the residents into rural and urban worlds.

In this regard, the communiqué issued on Thursday by the Fourth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which centered on the rule of law, describes whether and how the country will intensify its efforts to make advancements in administrative areas in which it has lagged behind. The effects of such reform would be huge, because economic reforms could fail without proper legal and judicial reforms.

The author is a reporter with China Daily. zhaoyinan@chinadaily.com.cn