(Source: "Rule of Law Daily" 2025-04-25)
Recently, the issue of "banning red, blue and black background colors on advertising plaques" in Sanhe City, Langfang, Hebei Province has aroused widespread concern in the society. Langfang City issued a briefing stating: After preliminary verification by the joint investigation team, the main issues reported by the media are basically true. At present, the main person in charge of the Sanhe Municipal Party Committee has been removed from office, and the Sanhe Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government have been instructed to reflect deeply, learn lessons, and make comprehensive rectifications.
A reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" combed through public information and found that incidents like this forcing the unification of store advertising plaques have occurred frequently in recent years.
In April 2023, shops along a street in a city in Liaoning Province were uniformly replaced with black-bottomed signs, causing many netizens to complain; in October of the same year, the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision of Chengdu City, Sichuan Province reported and investigated 6 typical cases of formalism and bureaucracy, one of which was in the city. One street adopted the "big pinyin, small Chinese characters" plan to replace store signboards without sufficient research and demonstration, which had an impact on mass operations; in December 2024, a street in a city in Hebei Province unified black background and white character store signboards. After netizens complained, the relevant local departments demolished them overnight...
Unified advertising plaques may seem like just a way to regulate the appearance of the city, but in fact they are closely related to people’s lives. Why do such major administrative decisions frequently cause controversy? What problems does the mandatory uniformity of advertising plaques expose? How to avoid this happening again? To this end, the reporter interviewed many legal experts.
atKong Xiangwen, associate professor at the w88 casino of Law, w88 casinoIt seems that the forced unification of store billboards in many places not only violates the basic requirements of administrative law, but also runs counter to the central government’s guidance on optimizing the business environment.
He analyzed that the relevant departments arbitrarily increased the obligations of the parties and reduced the rights and interests of the parties without legal basis, which violated the principle of administration according to law. The principle of proportionality in the principle of reasonable administration requires that administrative means have a substantial and legitimate connection with the purpose to be achieved. Whether it is based on urban governance or the purpose of regulating advertising settings, it is difficult to prove the necessity of changing all billboards to specific colors. Moreover, such behavior will cause excessive damage to the property rights and freedom of business of merchants, and therefore violates the principle of proportionality in the principle of reasonable administration.
Ma Lihong, senior partner of Beijing Deheheng Law Firm, believes that these urban management behaviors highlight the shortcomings of some local department staff in the concept of rule of law, misinterpret the spirit of relevant provisions of the "Urban City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Management Regulations", and alienate "neat and orderly" into the law enforcement goal of "visual unity". At the same time, the prohibitive provisions of the "Regulations on Optimizing the Business Environment" that "must not interfere with the operational autonomy of market entities" have not been implemented.
"These inappropriate behaviors in urban management also reflect the shortcomings in system design in some places. According to the relevant provisions of the "Interim Regulations on Major Administrative Decision-making Procedures", major administrative decisions should be subject to legal procedures such as public participation and expert argumentation. The occurrence of problematic administrative behaviors in some places shows that the local legality review procedures for administrative behaviors are not strict and the supervision mechanism is ineffective." Ma Lihong said.
She pointed out that the social governance in these places has not yet completely transformed from "regulatory governance" to "rule of law governance".
Why do some city managers make mistakes in major administrative decisions? Zheng Lei, an associate professor at the Law w88 casino of Zhengzhou University, believes that there is nothing wrong with the idea of planning, constructing, and managing cities well. The fault lies in the deviation of individual leading cadres’ views on political performance. They are not good at using legal thinking and legal methods to promote urban governance. They interfere in urban planning and design at will, pursue uniform store plaques one-sidedly, and torment market entities in the comprehensive improvement of city appearance.
As early as 2016, the "Several Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Further Strengthening the Management of Urban Planning and Construction" stated: "Strictly implement the legal procedures for administrative decision-making in urban planning and construction management, and resolutely curb the phenomenon of leading cadres intervening at will in urban planning, design and engineering construction." The "Regulations on Optimizing the Business Environment" also stipulates that activities such as clean-up and rectification, special rectification, etc., should be carried out strictly in accordance with the law.
“In practice, behind the arbitrariness of individual leading cadres is the phenomenon of ‘going through the motions’ and ‘one-note speech’ in public participation in urban governance decision-making, collective discussion and decision-making in some places, resulting in insufficient play in the legality review of major decisions and normative documents, and the effectiveness of systems such as accountability for disciplinary and illegal decision-making have not been well implemented.” Zheng Lei said.
How to prevent similar phenomena from happening again?
Zheng Lei proposed that when administrative agencies formulate and implement color control regulations and measures for outdoor advertising and signboards based on aesthetic considerations, they must consider whether they violate the provisions of higher-level laws, whether they excessively interfere with the operational autonomy of market entities, whether the measures taken are consistent with the principle of proportionality and their purposes, whether they violate legal procedures, etc. They must administer in accordance with the law and not be overstepped or absent.
“To this end, the legality review mechanism for major decision-making and normative documents (i.e., ‘red-headed documents’) should be improved as soon as possible.” Zheng Lei said, “In order to standardize the ‘red-headed documents,’ the “State Council’s 2024 Legislative Work Plan” proposes to prepare procedural regulations for the formulation of administrative normative documents. The promulgation of the regulations should be accelerated, and the administrative normative document filing and review mechanism should be further improved to ensure that everything is necessary, everything must be reviewed, and errors must be corrected.”
The legal procedures for administrative decision-making in urban planning and construction management should also be strictly implemented. For major administrative decisions, legal procedures such as public participation, expert argumentation, risk assessment, legality review, and collective discussion and decision-making stipulated in the "Interim Regulations on Major Administrative Decision-making Procedures" must be strictly implemented. For non-major administrative decisions, the "Interim Regulations on Major Administrative Decision-Making Procedures" must also be applied with reference. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the accountability for disciplinary and illegal decision-making, strengthen the supervision and accountability of discipline inspection committees, improve the notification and exposure system of typical cases, and publish a number of typical cases of disciplinary and illegal decision-making in urban planning and construction management that have caused heavy losses or adverse effects.
Ma Lihong said that procedures should be strictly controlled, and suggested adding a procedure that "major law enforcement decisions require the signature and endorsement of legal advisors" to ensure the legality of the procedures to the greatest extent; strengthen the construction of the supervision system, and implement the special items stipulated in the Supervision Law of the Standing Committees of People's Congresses at all levels Right of inquiry; implement the accompanying review system for normative documents stipulated in the Administrative Litigation Law, properly grasp the standard of "obviously inappropriate" administrative actions in judicial practice; improve and implement the post-decision evaluation system stipulated in the "Interim Regulations on Major Administrative Decision-making Procedures", establish the licensing evaluation mechanism set by the Administrative Licensing Law, etc.
"We must also implement the assessment system and implement the assessment and accountability system through the Law on Administrative Punishment for Public Servants and Internal Government Assessment Methods. At the same time, we will enhance the awareness of social participation in governance and implement the pre-disclosure system for major decisions stipulated in the Government Information Disclosure Regulations," Ma Lihong said.
She said that the government’s administrative behavior should not only comply with the principle of “streamlining and efficiency”, but also achieve the requirement of “locking power into the cage of the system”. The key is to improve the level of urban governance through the responsibility-reinforcement mechanism, bid farewell to the “one size fits all” law enforcement, and make the city come alive, showing multiple colors and unique charm.
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