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by march 2024, there will be 3.972 million "law-savvy people" across the country, active in the acquaintance society of rural china.

village judges and village legal advisers have high legal expertise and professional qualifications, while the professional requirements for "people who understand the law" are relatively not that high.

in the past, rural areas often used strength and voice to resolve disputes. the more important role of popularizing the law is to let villagers know that the law is the most fundamental way to solve problems, rather than the previous "rules".

"law-savvy people" in peixie village, xiaochi town, xinluo district, longyan city, went to people's homes to mediate neighborhood disputes. (photo provided by the interviewee)

in rural areas, dead branches and leaves falling into a neighbor's house can also become the fuse of a dispute.

in may 2023, lin, who settled in hong kong, returned to chang'an village, yingqian street, changle district, fuzhou city, fujian province, to renovate his old house. he found that the longan tree next door was two stories high, and some branches extended into his yard. every year, new leaves replaced old leaves, and the fallen leaves accumulated and blocked the drainage ditch. lin did not inform his neighbors and cut off the branches that had grown over without authorization. the two families quarreled.

villager chen yong heard the news and came to talk to the two families.

he first told lin that cutting down someone else's tree without permission was damaging other people's property. he also told the neighbor that the tree had grown into someone else's space, which infringed on their land use rights. then he started talking about reason and human relations, "what was cut off was only the branch, even if it had fruit, it wouldn't be much" and "you were originally in the right, but you are no longer in the right after you cut it down."

in the end, the two sides shook hands and made peace, and no money or litigation was involved.

this is how it is in the countryside. both sides took a step back and discussed how to resolve the conflict. in the local area, village workers like chen yong can both explain the law and show human feelings in disputes. after 2021, they voluntarily joined the fujian province "dandelion" legal education volunteer alliance, were given the title of "legal experts", and were certified to work and volunteer to educate the public about the law.

data from the ministry of justice show that by march 2024, there were 3.972 million "law-savvy people" across the country, active in the acquaintance society of rural china. they play a leading role in learning the law, popularizing and interpreting the law, and settling disputes.

"if you know the law, you won't suffer losses easily"

if you want to be a "law expert", the most important quality is not how many laws and difficult terms you have mastered, but to learn how to translate - to translate legal terms into local dialects that even villagers can understand.

in peixia village, xiaochi town, xinluo district, longyan city, lai wenfeng, a member of the village committee, has long been a "translator".

around february 2024, bamboo shoots sprouted on the bamboo mountain, and villagers went up the mountain to dig them. the boundaries of the forest land contracted by the villagers were clear, but the growth of bamboo shoots was not restricted. some villagers felt that their 30 or 50 bamboo shoots had crossed the boundary and grown to the other side. as a result, they were discovered by the other party when they were digging without permission. the two sides quarreled with the village committee.

lai wenfeng told the southern weekend reporter that there are two main types of disputes in the village. one is trivial matters, and the other is disputes over land rights and forest rights, "about four or five of which occur a year."

once land is involved, the usual local practice is to have forestry officials check the forest rights certificate, look up the gps coordinates, or even have the district forestry department review relevant materials, and then explain the law and reason to the villagers from a factual perspective.

legally speaking, bamboo shoots are things attached to the ground. when things attached to the ground are separated from the land and become independent things, they are considered natural fruits. according to article 321 of the civil code, natural fruits are obtained by the owner; if there is both an owner and a usufruct holder, the usufruct holder shall obtain them; if the parties have other agreements, the agreement shall prevail.

"people don't like to hear you talk about the rules and regulations of the law," lai wenfeng said. so he told the two people, "according to the relevant legal provisions, the bamboo field belongs to the village collective, but after you contract it, your bamboo shoots will be his if they grow on his field, and his bamboo shoots will be yours if they grow over there."

in the countryside, friendship is important. lai wenfeng said that the villagers are all related, and sometimes a relative would come to persuade and mediate, and both sides would compromise. in the end, the bamboo shoot diggers compensated the other party with a few hundred yuan, and the problem was solved.

according to the process, after the two parties have reached a settlement, they must sign a mediation agreement, which will then be uploaded to the grassroots governance system for judicial confirmation. the two parties to the dispute and the village committee will each keep a copy of the mediation agreement.

yu chaoxia from peixia village used agreements to reject others' unreasonable demands.

in february 2024, because of building a house, her family exchanged 20 square meters of homestead with the neighbor's family, but the other party was reluctant to sign a written contract. finally, the village committee cadres and "legal experts" successfully mediated. the neighbor's sister did not understand at first and found yu zhaoxia to "make a big fuss." yu zhaoxia took the mediation agreement and told the other party that "this is legally binding." the other party has not come to argue since then.

the reason why villagers trust the law is because they have "tasted the sweetness of the law."

a village official from peixie village told the southern weekend reporter that the lesson of not abiding by the law was learned from other villages. twenty years ago, some villages rented out their land to enterprises, but due to poor legal awareness, the contracts they signed had legal loopholes, and the village suffered a "silent loss" and could not even recover 20 years of rent.

lai wenfeng also noticed that after 2017, the number of enterprises of various types increased in the village. even if the contract was only worth 10,000 yuan, the villagers would ask him to ask the village’s legal advisor to review it to avoid potential risks.

"both cadres and villagers now understand that only by understanding the law can they avoid being taken advantage of," said the aforementioned village cadre.

the view of peixie village, xiaochi town, xinluo district, longyan city. (photo by southern weekend reporter chen yifan)

from local to central

more than 20 years ago, some places explored the idea of ​​cultivating "people who understand the law" in order to change the local rural social governance landscape.

in 2002, zhen yusheng from the benxi municipal justice bureau of liaoning province published an article in the "china justice" magazine, introducing the experience of huanren manchu autonomous county in cultivating "people who understand the law."

the local judicial department found that the early rural legal education basically stayed in the form of large-scale lectures, loudspeakers, and slogans, thus forming a kind of public opinion pressure to make farmers honest and law-abiding. "this level of work is necessary, but from the perspective of improving citizens' legal literacy, the work cannot just stay at the aforementioned level... the composition of legal literacy includes both the accumulation of knowledge and the enhancement of legal awareness and the improvement of the ability to handle affairs in accordance with the law."

to this end, the huanren county party committee compiled and printed a book called "rural practical laws and regulations" and gave it to farmers free of charge. subsequently, each village trained village cadres and counselors around the book, legal night schools arranged courses all year round, and the county held a knowledge contest to select "top students in learning the law." in this way, the first batch of "people who understand the law" grew up a few years later. as representatives of the villagers, they took the lead in learning the law and doing things according to the law, changing the previous situation of "the husband has his own reasons and the wife has her own reasons."

more importantly, after the "people who understand the law" explained the law, the villagers learned to protect their rights according to the law.

the huanren county river management office once arbitrarily contracted out a section of a river in a local village and collected contract fees. the village committee and "legal experts" questioned the county government based on the river management regulations, pointing out that the river management department only has administrative management rights and does not enjoy ownership and economic benefits. after reviewing the regulations, the county government issued a notice that the contract was invalid and held an on-site meeting in the village to correct a series of infringements by the river management department.

xu jianyun, former director of the fuzhou municipal justice bureau in jiangxi province, also introduced the "fuzhou experience" in "china justice".

due to the prominent clan fighting and high number of petitions, chongren county under fuzhou has started to pilot the rural "legal knowledge" training project since 2015. two years later, the coverage of "legal knowledge" in chongren county has reached 77%. the number of cases of making trouble for profit, abnormal petitions, and various types of cases have decreased by 71%, 23%, and 15.6% respectively year-on-year.

by 2019, the experience of cultivating "legal experts" in rural areas was written into the "guiding opinions on strengthening and improving rural governance" issued by the general office of the cpc central committee and the state council. at the same time, fuzhou's practices were also written into the "research report on the construction of rule of law villages" written by the bureau of legal education and rule of law of the ministry of justice.

on november 8, 2021, the ministry of justice, the ministry of civil affairs, the ministry of agriculture and rural affairs and other departments issued the "work specifications for the training of rural "law-savvy people". the document mentioned that "law-savvy people" can be recommended by villagers themselves or by the village "two committees", and they will be selected from village cadres, people's mediators, "five elders" (old cadres, old soldiers, old experts, old teachers, old models), grid members and other groups.

subsequently, the county-level judicial administration department took the lead in conducting legal knowledge and rule of law practice training, and organized job assessments. those who passed the assessments were officially designated as "legal experts" and were awarded certificates and badges.

the document requires that by 2025, each administrative village will train at least three "people who understand the law" and gradually achieve full coverage of "people who understand the law" in village groups.

effect on change

it does not seem difficult to meet the requirement of having three "people who understand the law" in each village.

according to a southern weekend reporter, in longyan city, fujian province, there are currently 14,570 rural "law-savvy people", with an average of 7-8 "law-savvy people" in each administrative village, most of whom are village cadres, people's mediators, village group leaders, village representatives, etc.

the question is, is the position of “someone who understands the law” a duplicate position?

southern weekend reporters visited many administrative villages in fujian and found that in terms of personnel configuration at the village level, in addition to village committee cadres, there are "dandelion" legal education volunteers, village judges, legal advisers and mediation experts. these personnel themselves are responsible for disseminating legal policies and mediating disputes.

among them, the fujian "dandelion" legal education volunteer alliance was established in 2021. to date, there have been more than 153,000 legal education volunteers and 4,389 volunteer legal education teams.

zhang yousheng, deputy director of the longyan municipal justice bureau, told southern weekend reporters that the professional levels of these are not the same.

in addition to legal education volunteers, village judges and village legal advisers have high legal expertise and professional qualifications. rural mediators need rich mediation experience and recognition, while the professional requirements for "people who understand the law" are relatively lower, and it is easier to mobilize and organize ordinary people who respect the rule of law and love the law to participate widely. the "dandelion" legal education volunteers participate voluntarily and engage in legal education on a voluntary basis.

on the other hand, zhang yousheng said, "the establishment of 'people who understand the law' is a positive evaluation of the legal literacy of individual citizens by rural society, and it is a self-identification of the masses who are proficient in legal knowledge." at the same time, since village judges, village legal advisers and other people are busy with their own jobs, "people who understand the law" who are enthusiastic about popularizing the law, mediation and have a certain level of legal literacy are often active among the masses, which is more conducive to the timely resolution of conflicts and disputes at the grassroots level.

as the times change, the role of "people who understand the law" is also changing.

twenty years ago, zhen yusheng mentioned that when "people who understand the law" grow up, they constantly raise issues that are illegal in the previous work of counties and towns. the number of petition cases, rights protection cases, and litigation cases will increase significantly, and "some leading comrades even think that cultivating 'people who understand the law' is self-defeating."

but the current situation is different from the past. in fuzhou, jiangxi, the number of legal consultations increased by 54% year-on-year from 2015 to 2019, and the number of public legal service cases increased by 67% year-on-year. this is inseparable from the participation of "people who understand the law" in social governance.

longyan also showed a similar effect. zhang yousheng told the southern weekend reporter that from january to august 2024, people's mediation organizations of all levels and types in longyan city mediated 28,141 conflicts and disputes, and successfully mediated 28,100 of them, which played a certain role in reducing the burden on grassroots public security, courts, and petition systems.

because in the past, rural areas often used power and the right to speak to resolve disputes. "a very powerful clan was highly respected in the village. when there was a dispute, they could decide how much compensation to ask the other party to pay." but now it is not possible, said a staff member in charge of popularizing the law in fujian, "your right to speak cannot exceed the scope of the law. you cannot say that the law stipulates a compensation of 2,000 yuan, but you ask for 20,000 yuan."

the more important role of popularizing the law is to let the villagers know that the law is the most fundamental way to solve problems, rather than the previous "rules". but it must take a long time to accumulate, "just like changing a person's living habits, maintaining a living habit for 50 years is definitely more difficult than maintaining a living habit for 3 years, but it can continue to influence generations of people."

source: southern weekend

reporter | chen yifan

intern | cai jiali