CRI听力:Awareness Campaigns and Judicial Reforms Key to Rule of Law: Experts

Constitution Day was ratified by the top legislature during a plenary session last month, with the goal of promoting public awareness of China's basic law.

He Jiahong is with the China Behavior Law Association.

He says highlighting the authority of the Constitution is a key step for the government if it wants to keep corruption in-check.

"The rule of law means the rules are established according to the spirit of law and the main target is how to restrict the power and regulate the power of officials. Now the aim in China is to establish a modern state of rule of law, so (the) Constitution, is the most important law in the legal system, so to promote the rule of law, we should guarantee the supremacy of the Constitution."

In creating Constitution Day, the government is now requiring all elected or appointed officials to take a public oath of allegiance to the Constitution before taking office.

Observers are suggesting this is meant to be a symbolic gesture to signal to government officials that the days of the "rule of man" in China is coming to an end, where government officials wield more power than the laws they're meant to follow.

Zhang Xiang is a law professor at Renmin University.

"If we can establish a certain approach for citizens to protect their rights through constitutional litigation and reviews, then public awareness of the Constitution will no longer be a problem. In other words, the public will gradually form a strong constitutional awareness as they come to understand it is protecting their rights."

The Chinese government has already been forging ahead with a series of judicial reforms.

Cross-regional courts and prosecution offices are being set up to reduce potential interference by local governments in cases which may affect their jurisdiction or local officials.

Local officials are also being banned from interfering in local court cases, and will face sanctions if caught trying to interfere with the courts.

He Jiahong with the China Behavior Law Association.

"Now I think the judicial reform is trying to provide more independence to the judiciary to the lower level. So I think in future we should have more effective guarantee to protect citizen's right according to constitution, and this is a big challenge."

For CRI, this is Tu Yun.