People's Daily:

The third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed improvements to the public legal services system that covers both urban and rural populations. How does the MOJ plan to advance this initiative? Thank you. 

Yang Xiangbin:

Thank you for your question and for everyone's interest in public legal services. Actually, public legal services are closely related to our daily lives and work. For example, many of the journalists here today have had experiences such as hiring a lawyer or obtaining notarization. In this sense, public legal services are actually a fundamental, service-oriented and supportive aspect of exercising law-based governance on all fronts, playing a vital role in ensuring and improving people's livelihoods. The initiative to build a system for public legal services that covers both urban and rural populations was first proposed during the fourth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. After ten years of planning, developing and improving, China has basically established a convenient, efficient and inclusive system for public legal services that is equitably accessible to both urban and rural populations. So far, there are 754,000 legal service agencies of various kinds nationwide, with 3.997 million legal professionals. A total of 590,000 physical platforms have been built to provide public legal services, with over 600,000 villages and communities now equipped with legal advisors. Additionally, the public legal service hotline and the Legal Services of China website have been fully launched and are operating smoothly. Our legal service workers handle over 40 million various cases annually. Public legal services have played a crucial role in supporting economic and social development, safeguarding fairness and justice, and promoting social harmony and stability.

As mentioned earlier, the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee emphasized the need to improve the system for public legal services that covers both urban and rural populations. In line with this instruction, we will focus on several aspects. First, we will strengthen coordination and planning, especially by formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for the public legal service system. This plan will coordinate and arrange various tasks to refine the system during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Second, we will promote balanced development between urban and rural areas and different regions. Given China's vast landscape and the imbalance between the eastern and western regions, concrete and effective measures will be taken to address the uneven distribution of resources for public legal services. This primarily includes establishing and improving a mechanism for lawful cross-regional flow of resources for legal services as well as deepening paired assistance between legal professions in the eastern, central and western regions. Additionally, we will work to initiate a program that provides legal aid to the western region while continuing ongoing efforts such as the "Lawyer Service Team to support legal services in Xizang," "Legal Services for the Elderly" and "Legal Services by Your Side for People with Disabilities. " These initiatives aim to continuously make public legal services more balanced and accessible. Third, we will encourage and guide the participation of nongovernmental actors, recognizing that the provision of pro bono legal services is a shared responsibility across all sectors of society. To this end, we will establish and improve mechanisms for volunteers to provide legal services and foster a number of professional public-interest legal service organizations, thereby diversifying service providers. Fourth, we will improve legal service quality and credibility. This primarily involves refining the supervisory and management system for public legal services, creating a coordinated regulatory framework that integrates administrative regulation, self-discipline of legal industry and associations, autonomy of legal institutions as well as public supervision to achieve joint management and participation. Our overarching goal is to better meet people's needs for high-quality public legal services and continuously enhance the public's sense of gain and satisfaction in the legal field. Thank you.