The number of laws enacted during the last 20 years was phenomenal. Each of these years saw a bulk of new laws and regulations written. Consequently, some 400 laws, 1,000 administrative acts, 10,000 local rules and regulations and 30,000 administrative procedures were enacted or amended by the end of 2002. These documents regulate almost every basic area of social behavior in the country.

The areas regulated by law have increased in the mean time. A framework has been built up with these basic areas--the Constitution, administrative acts, civil and commercial laws, economic laws, social order laws, criminal laws and procedural laws--along with some other groups of laws. The whole system is based on an improved Constitution.

Overall legislative efforts have tried to back the nation’s economic reform, opening up and invigoration. The achievements in legislation have protected and promoted smooth economic growth and the restructuring of the economic system.

As the nation sets a socialist market economy as the goal of its economic reform, making laws to regulate market behavior has become the country’s strategic priority. Special attention, therefore, has been paid in formulating the following kinds of laws:

• Laws to regulate market participants, defining their rights and obligations;
• Laws to regulate relationships among market participants in a bid to ensure fair competition and good market order;
• Laws to improve the government’s macro-economic control to ensure a healthy economic growth and restrain negative factors;
• Laws to generate a social security system to cope with problems like bankruptcy and unemployment, to provide relieves, and to retain social stability.