Big year for corporate legal affairs in China

The year 2014 is the year in which the opening move in comprehensively promoting the creation of a China ruled by law is being made, a key year for seeking structural adjustment of China’s economy under the pressure of the downturn, the year of launching the comprehensive reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the mixed ownership system at the core, and the year of the acceptance check for the three-year objective for compliance work in enterprises under the central government. The immense changes in the internal and external environments of enterprises present new opportunities and challenges for corporate legal affairs management in China.

In accordance with the overall requirement of the state of promoting the creation of a “China ruled by law”, the carrying out of the top-down design of corporate compliance work has become one of the key points of attention of every type of enterprise, and particularly SOEs, in 2014. Huang Shuhe, vice chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), has stated that enterprises under the central government are to set the creation of “enterprises ruled by law” as their objective and strive to enhance four modes of thinking about the rule of law among the senior officers of enterprises – bottom-line thinking, rational thinking, contract thinking and rule thinking.

Ye Xiaozhong is the director of the China Enterprise Legal Management Research Centre at China University of Political Science and Law