Evolving law system embraces 30th anniversary of China's reform, opening up
http://www.huanqiu.com 来源：新华网 网友评论条进入论坛 2008-01-02 09:56
BEIJING, Jan. 1 (Xinhua) -- As 2008 is now here, with it comes a batch of new laws. Following 30 years of reform and opening-up, not only has this helped China realize greater economic achievement, it has also shaped its legal system.
In the Labor Contract Law that came into effect on Tuesday, it entitled employees who worked in one company for 10 years or more to sign contracts that protected them from dismissal without cause. It also required employers to contribute to employee's social security accounts and set wage standards for probation and overtime.
Although some companies have misunderstood some clauses of the law, thinking that its implementation would drive up their human resources costs, lawmakers believed it would play a positive role in building harmonious relations between employers and employees.
Zheng Gongcheng, a member of National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee and a noted labor law expert, said the labor contract law itself favored neither employees nor employers.
"As a law that gives full protection to workers' legal rights, it also stipulates that employees must shoulder equal duties, such as keeping confidential issues concerning employers' intellectual property rights. This is crucial for foreign companies."
To date, more than 570,000 foreign enterprises had set up in China since the country opened it's door to outside investors in the 1980s. They employed about 25 million people as of the end of 2005, according to official statistics.
An official government survey found many foreign companies in coastal provinces overworked and underpaid their employees.
With the employment promotion law now in effect, it also prohibited discrimination against job seekers because of their ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, age or physical disabilities.
The law required governments above the county level to establish an early-warning system to prevent, regulate and control possible cases of large-scale unemployment.
While expediting the economic field legislation in the past 30 years, Chinese lawmakers have also focused on laws on the social sphere. It paid special attention to protecting individual rights, said a NPC Standing Committee official.
The legislation process also reflected that the country was making efforts to let ordinary citizens and companies enjoy the economic achievement China had made during the 30 years of reform and opening-up.
China's top legislature had also adopted an amendment to individual income tax law that would be effective on March 1.
According to the amendment, China's monthly individual income tax threshold would increase to 2,000 yuan (about 273 U.S. dollars), making 70 percent of those employed exempt from income tax.
China's monthly individual income tax threshold was 800 yuan in1980, two years after the country launched its reform and opening-up drive.
In 1978, China's financial revenue was 113.2 billion yuan, while last year, the figure was expected to exceed five trillion yuan. Meanwhile, per-capita income also greatly increased during the period.
The increase of individual income tax threshold aimed to ease the burden of medium- and low-income earners facing higher living costs. It had also demonstrated that Chinese people's living standards had greatly improved during the past 30 years.
From Tuesday, China's milestone enterprise tax income law also went into effect. The law set an unified income tax rate for domestic and foreign companies at 25 percent. This came after years of criticism that the original dual income tax mechanism was unfair to domestic enterprises.
Previously, the actual average income tax burden on Chinese companies was 25 percent, while that on foreign enterprises was 15percent. Many people thought such a policy forced domestic businesses to face tougher competition since China's 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Preferential taxation and land policies, which were described as "policies superior to national treatment", have always been important attractions to overseas investment since China began its reform and opening up.
"It's necessary to offer certain incentives to foreign investors during the initial period of the reform and opening up, when China was stranded by a lack of capital, foreign exchange and an unsound market system," said Justin Yifu Lin, a renowned economist and a member of China's top political advisory body.
But problems have surfaced along with China's rapid economic development. Dual-income tax rates had incurred growing complaints from domestic enterprises, some of which even disguised themselves as overseas-funded enterprises to dodge tax, according to Ministry of Finance sources.
"To unify the income tax rate for domestic and foreign companies did not mean China will shift its reform and opening-up direction backward. It means the country wants to build a more equal market order and further stick to the reform and opening-up policy," said the unnamed NPC Standing Committee official.
In 1978, two years after the end of China's decade-long turbulent "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), the country's legal system was almost in ruin. Currently, more than 230 laws pertained to every aspect of Chinese life, more than 90 percent of which were enacted after 1978.
China was making every effort to fulfill its goal of building a legal system with Chinese characteristics, based on which, experts believed, the reform and opening-up drive would be unarguably better continued.
