A Study Of Religious Charity Activities By Perfecting The Rule Of Law In Administrative Supervision

In 2012,the United Front Work Department of CPC Central Committee,the National Religious Affairs Administration,the National Development and Reform Commission,the Ministry of Finance,the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other relevant departments issued The Opinions on Encouraging and Regulating the Religious Community to Engage in Charity Activities(hereinafter referred to as The Opinions)which "supports and encourages religious community to engage in charity activities and regulates and supervises them according to law," and further specifies the working principles of "supervision according to law".This not only provides a policy basis for the religious community to participate in charity activities,but also points out the government’s responsibility of supervising religious charity activities by law.The perfection of government administrative supervision is to use more perfect legal means to supervise religious charity activities,and thus promotes the institutional relationship between religion and government and makes religious believers play active roles in the circles of economy and society.Improving the policies and regulations on religious charity administrative supervision and regulating religious philanthropy according to law is an integrity part of supervising religious affairs according to law and implementing the requirement of "improving the legal level of religious affairs";the fundamental goal of "supervising religious affairs according to law" is to "guide religions to adapt to socialist society".Therefore,the ultimate goal of the perfection of the administrative supervision of religious charity activities is to better guide religious charity to adapt to the society,serve both the society and people,reflecting "the adaptation of religion and socialist society".Religious charity activity is a general term for activities which are carried out by religious organizations and religious believers in certain places and serve social welfare undertakings.Such activities are both religious and charitable in the background,which highlights their duality;the activity types contain donations and the establishment of projects and organizations,including foundations,social welfare institutions,non-profit medical institutions,etc.,which reflects the diversity of the activity types;the activity fields involve pension,medical care,disaster relief and many other social services,which reveals the secularity of the services.Based on activity types and characteristics,the government handles religious charity affairs by means of law.When the government supervises religious charity activities,the regulatory authorities involve the cooperation of the department of the religious affairs,civil affairs,and finance,which reflects the broadness of the subject;the regulatory affairs involve two major areas of religion and charity,including registration,finance,taxation and religious infiltration,which indicates the complexity of the content;the regulatory means use a variety of policies and laws to regulate the activities,which shows the diversity of the means.The activities and government regulations involve actively guiding religions to adapt to the socialist society,supervising religious affairs according to law,making religious community and religious believers play active roles,adhering to the principle of independence and self-management and other policies,and entails voluntary failure,limited government,accountability and other theories,which have become the internal guidelines and provided references for the government to supervise the religious charity activities and perfect the regulations.In the summary of the process of the rule of law in the administrative supervision of religious charity activities,from the period before the reform and opening up when the relatively conservative religious policies led to the slow development of religious charity,to the "adaptation theory" which opens up the space of the rule of law for religious charity,the policy evolution promotes the development of the rule of law for religious charity.The thesis uses Fabao Legal Database of Peking University to sort out the main policies and regulations concerning religious charity activities,reviews the information-based management process of charitable organizations since 2014,summarizes the legalized and information-based management methods of administration of religious charity activities and highlights the standardized development of the supervision of religious charity organizations.Based on this,the thesis analyzes the legal effectiveness of religious charity which consists of encouragement,legislation,supervision and coordination.The current administrative supervision of religious charity activities is still immature,and according to the research data of the religious charity in six provinces of China in 2016 carried out by the Amity Foundation,the statistical data of charity reports and other relevant quantitative analysis,there exist practical legal dilemmas on the aspects of imperfect rule of law system,low transparency of information disclosure,disguised missions in charitable activities and lack of self-discipline management institutions,which are restricted by the ambiguity of the definition of administrative subjects,little publicity,low development level and lack of enough trained professionals.Faced with the above challenges,the thesis explores how to solve the practical problems and respond to the constraints from the aspects of safeguarding and improving the rule of law,and the solutions are in conformity with the leadership of CCP,clearing government responsibilities,deepening government cognition,objectively and appropriately publicizing religious charity and establishing systematic talent training mechanism to support the development of religious charity,and besides,supplementing the supporting regulations from the legal level,implementing the accountability system to ensure information disclosure,strengthening education to make clear the requirements for missionary norms,establishing a religious charity committee to improve the rule of law and exploring the path of the rule of law to provide administrative supervision.