Class Action Lawsuits Needed

Soon after the scandal was exposed that a large number of children developed kidney stones from milk powder containing melamine, several lawyers in Beijing and other regions of the country volunteered to offer legal advice to victimized families planning to sue guilty milk powder producers.

The lawyers' righteous campaign is laudable. However, the difficulties that the victimized families are facing in the process to claim compensation again indicate the urgency for China to introduce class action lawsuits.

In a society ruled by law, legal proceedings are the most effective way for citizens to protect their rights and interests. However, due to the sometimes unaffordable costs of filing lawsuits, many people eventually give up. Take the recent tainted milk powder scandal as an example. All victimized families are legally entitled to compensation so long as they can provide hard evidence for their use of the contaminated dairy products and authentic assessments of the damages. A noticeable fact is that few Chinese consumers are used to retaining invoices for inexpensive commodities and damage assessments are time and money consuming in China. Even if most victimized families, already exceeding more than 13,000, successfully prepare all documents needed and prosecute, it's unimaginable that courts can settle the cases in a timely manner.

To prevent such problems from happening again, class actions are helpful. These allow procuratorial organs to single out companies at fault on behalf of victims of fake or substandard commodities. In addition to relieving the government from interfering in civil cases and saving judicial resources, they can also play a significant role in deterring companies that sacrifice health and safety of the general public for their own profits.

Chengdu Commercial Daily

Housing Access Before Profit

In 2007, Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, built a large public housing community for the city's low-income families in a suburban area. Due to its remote location and inconvenient traffic, however, more than two thirds of the apartments in the community remain unoccupied to date.

Guangzhou is not the only Chinese city to have this problem. Nowadays, many local governments tend to reserve land in downtown areas for commercial housing projects that contribute a lot to fiscal revenues. Public housing projects are always located in remote areas where the lack of basic municipal facilities has prevented their target residents from settling in.

A city's development level is not only measured by its economic strength. More importantly, all its residents, rich or poor, should be able to live comfortably and enjoy equal access to high-quality public services. For this purpose, municipal facilities should never be transformed into "resources" monopolized by a small group of wealthy people.

It's time to consider building public housing projects in areas with developed municipal facilities. Though this practice may reduce the governments' income from land sales, it benefits people at the grassroots level who are also masters of the country.

Yanzhao Metropolitan Daily

Power Has Boundaries Too

Effective October 1, the Rules on Administrative Procedures of central China's Hunan Province state that all local regulations will automatically expire five years after their promulgation. As for those interim regulations, the duration will not exceed two years. Hunan's stipulations are the first of their kind in the country.

In China, regulations are formulated by government departments, which have almost the same legal effectiveness as laws. It's hard to estimate how many regulations are being enforced because the number of government departments that have been empowered in this field is uncountable. Worse still, regulations from different departments sometimes conflict with each other.

Another problem with government regulations is their indefinite duration. In some extreme cases, interim regulations had been implemented for more than 20 years without any amendments.

The overrun of regulations reflects the abuse of administrative power. If they remain unregulated, some government departments will certainly use their quasi-legislative powers to expand and legalize their own interests. This poses a big threat to the public's rights and interests.

The government of Hunan has made an encouraging example of self-restraint through implementing the regulation limits. It's expected that other regions of the country will follow Hunan's example as soon as possible.

Yangcheng Evening News

Gradual Farewell

On September 22, many Chinese cities joined their foreign counterparts in the celebration of International Car Free Day. According to official statistics, if all China's cars had been off the road for a day, they would have helped reduce the country's gas consumption by 33 million liters and axe the pollutant discharge by 90 percent. In addition, thousands of lives would have been saved from possible crashes.

Despite these tangible benefits, the "car-free day" initiative will not promote public awareness of environmental protection if it fails to become part of Chinese people's daily life.

This does not necessarily mean that those rigid car use restrictions implemented on Car Free Day should be made permanent immediately, because the public transport systems in most Chinese cities, major cities in particular, still cannot cope with the expected huge passenger flows.

It is more practical for policymakers to guide the trend through measures such as introducing the fuel tax, implementing strict limits on official vehicles and increasing investment in the R&D of energy-efficient vehicles. Efforts should also be made to build an environment that is more friendly to bus riders, cyclists and pedestrians by allowing them to each have smooth and safe special lanes.

Beijing Youth Daily