China law to make officials listen to "complaints"

BEIJING, June 9 (Reuters) China has approved a new regulation promising its citizens more power to lodge complaints and request reviews into government decisions and actions that infringe upon their rights, state media reported.

The Regulation on Implementing Administrative Review Law approved by China's State Council yesterday would allow for the sacking of officials of relevant government departments who failed to take petitions seriously, Xinhua news agency said.

''It is an important platform for China's administrative organs to solve disputes, ease social tension and strengthen inner monitoring,'' Xinhua quoted an unnamed official with the State Council's legal office as saying in a written statement late yesterday.

China's stability-obsessed Communist government is grappling with a rise in social unrest, stemming from anger fuelled by a growing rich-poor divide, official corruption, pollution and heavy-handed land grabs without proper compensation in the countryside.

The new regulation, to come effective on August 1, requires government departments at or above county level to set up proper review mechanisms to respond to cases lodged by at least five people.

Its approval follows a number of riots and demonstrations across the country in recent weeks.

Last week, thousands of people in China's southwestern port of Xiamen, in Fujian province, demonstrated against plans to build a chemical plant, likening it to an environmental ''A-bomb''.

In May, thousands of farmers smashed government offices and set fire to cars in several towns in Bobai county, Guangxi, in response to fines and forced property expropriation as punishment for violating China's one-child policy.

Fearing social unrest could bring about its downfall, China's Communist government has moved to increase transparency and give its citizens more say in policy.

In April, China released transparency regulations empowering citizens to demand information from its secretive government about finances, economic plans, statistics, land development and a raft of other policies.

REUTERS GT KN1020