Draft may expand lawsuits against government

BEIJING - Chinese people may soon be able to challenge unreasonable administrative legislation - which is currently excluded from the scope of court hearings - in an attempt to ease intensified relations between officials and the public, a legal expert said.

Wang Xixin, a law professor at Peking University and contributing researcher of China's top legislature, told China Daily that related departments have started to draft the amendment to the Administrative Litigation Law, which will very likely add government regulations such as urban planning to the scope of judicial hearings.

"It is a big deficiency in the current litigation regulation which doesn't allow the public to sue regulatory documents, government decisions and other regulations, since such government decisions usually exert a constant and wide-ranging impact on the people and will seriously infringe on civic rights, if ill-drafted," Wang said.