By Zhang Yuanyuan

The self-immolation of Tang Fuzhen in protest against the forcible demolition of her house in Chengdu on November 13 has roused public indignation against violent demolitions.

It even prompted five Peking University professors to write a joint letter to the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, condemning the Housing Demolition and Relocation Management Regulation for contradicting the Property Law and the Constitution and appealing for a constitutional review.

It is not the first time that an unnatural death aroused public concern over the unconstitutionality of a particular administrative regulation.

On March 20, 2003, Sun Zhigang, a university student from Hubei Province, was beaten to death at a penitentiary in Guangzhou.

In May 2003, eight scholars submitted a proposal to the NPC Standing Committee, appealing for a review of the constitutionality of the two-decade old Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars, which were finally abolished.

Generated by the tragic deaths of two victims, these two proposals denouncing the unconstitutionality of certain regulations share the same aim: to activate China's constitutional review mechanism.

According to the Legislative A. airs Office of the State Council, in 2008 China enacted 429 local regulations, 617 local governmental rules and 160 departmental regulations.

How can we ensure that all these regulations tally with the Constitution? Who should take the role of supervision and inspection when contradictions occur? Who can declare them null and void? These are the fundamental issues concerning constitutional review.

In China, the Constitution does not give courts the right to review the validity of local or administrative legislations. And judges have no power to declare them invalid in the verdict.

In 2003, Li Huijuan, a judge in Luoyang, Henan Province, was dismissed after having declared invalid a clause in local regulations that contradicted a national law about seeds while ruling on a civil case.

In October 2009, the Supreme Court passed a decision indicating that judges could neither make reference to constitutional norms in their verdicts, nor confirm the validity of the rules or regulations concerned which contradict higher-level laws.

According to the Constitution and Legislative Law, the NPC Standing Committee is the sole authority for the constitutional review of administrative regulations and local laws.

If any government body considers that an administrative regulation, local regulation or autonomous regulation contradicts the Constitution, they have to submit the conflicting legislation to the NPC Standing Committee, and it will then distribute the legislation to special committees for review.

Other units and citizens can make recommendations to the NPC Standing Committee. If these proposals are considered necessary, they will also be sent to special committees for review.

In October 2000, the NPC Standing Committee formulated the working procedure of review to implement the provision.

In 2003, it modified the passive constitutional review pattern into a combination of both passive and active processes. In 2004, it established a specific office for reviewing regulations for consistency in national law.

But the well-constructed system has never been used.

On December 4, 2007, 69 experts and scholars submitted a public recommendation to the NPC Standing Committee, calling for the constitutional review of the reeducation through labor system.

They pointed out that the system contradicts the provisions of the Constitution, the legislative law and the Administrative Punishment Law. Nevertheless, a constitutional review was never started.

It was only after blood had been shed and indignation aroused that the problems could be solved in an unsystematic way.

Pushed by the deaths of the victims, our constitutional review mechanism marches on slowly, without a conventional system and clearly operable procedures. We have become accustomed to solving recurrent unconstitutional problems in a non-adversarial way.

If the proposal submitted by the five professors can only urge the State Council to revise the Housing Demolition and Relocation Management Regulation, the advancement of the constitutional review system in China can only be pushed forward by sacrifice.

But how many lives still need to be lost to correct an unconstitutional regulation? And how long can the public's expectations of and patience with the constitutional review mechanism last?

The author is a full-time researcher at the Legal Information Department of China Law Society and a Doctor of Laws. globaltimesopinion@yahoo.com