In your opinion, what specific difficulties must be tackled?

According to the Regulations on Legal Aid, the precondition of applying for legal aid must be economic difficulty, while the specific standard is set by local governments, which typically take the basic subsistence allowance level as a reference point. But the fact is that a large number of people above the standard cannot afford lawyers’ fees. Moreover, the people who benefit from these special policies are urban residents. How can we make sure that rural people, who are not covered by the policy of allowance protection, also receive legal aid from the government? It is clear that only a scientific standard can ensure that the legal aid system covers a broader range of people. Of course, it is a challenging target at present in China without a transparent wealth assessment system.

Another cardinal issue is the unbalanced development of the legal aid system. And this phenomenon is correlated with the yawning gap between rich and poor areas. For example, in some economically advanced areas, the local government’s support might reach a ceiling of about 4,000 yuan per legal aid case, while some local governments in the poor western areas can only provide support of 100 yuan. The restructuring of legal resources is the key point to resolving this issue. What we have done includes recruiting some college graduates to work in the western provinces as legal volunteers and encouraging communication between different legal aid institutions in the eastern and western areas. Otherwise, we plan to recruit some professional lawyers as volunteers to do some consulting and training work in the central and western areas in succession.

We also face the problems of a shortage of financing and people, as well as the stability of the professional staff.

How does the Legal Aid Center ensure the quality of its casework?

The quality of the work is the bottom line in the field of legal aid. However, some problems still exist in some government-run legal aid institutions, and our restructuring and standardization work targets these aspects. At present, our standards for these legal aid centers are quite high, matching those of commercial law offices.

As a government official, how do you evaluate the position and impact of some nongovernmental legal aid institutions?

These unofficial legal aid institutions can be regarded as a necessary complement to the official ones on the path to establishing a perfect legal aid system in China. Indeed, there are far from enough of these types of unofficial institutions in China today.

What is the strategy for promoting the legal aid system in China?

The Ministry of Justice has announced a blueprint for developing the legal aid system over the next five years. According to this blueprint, we have taken three areas as key points. First, we must clarify the duty of government and increase financing, achieving a 20-percent increase per year and attaining the general standards of developing countries in 2010. Meanwhile, the advocacy work will be expanded to cover 90 percent of the population in medium-sized and large cities, as well as 50 percent in other areas.

Furthermore, lowering the application barrier and covering a broader range of people are another urgent job. Our endeavors will focus on these aspects: in the next five years, any citizen can call a consulting office at any time, and it should take people less than two hours to go to any legal aid office. The rate of resolving cases should increase 20 percent a year and satisfy the basic needs of the population as a whole.