Farewell to different prices paid for victims suffering same fate

On Friday, the Supreme People's Court published a draft judicial explanation on its official website to solicit public opinions. According to the draft, the compensation standards for death or disabilities in civil lawsuits will be the same for victims with an urban or rural hukou, or residential registration.

The SPC first introduced death compensation standards in 2003, according to which that for urban residents was calculated based on the average personal disposable income of urban residents, while that for rural residents was calculated on the average personal income of all residents.

The former is obviously higher than the latter. As a result, rural residents for long could only receive lower compensations than their urban counterparts. For example, three children died in a traffic accident in 2005. The families of two of the children who lived in an urban area received 200,000 yuan ($31,360) each, while the family of the other child, who resided in a rural area and was registered as a rural resident, received only 90,000 yuan.

The 2003 standards provoked much heated debate because of this difference. But it simply reflected the urban-rural gap at that time.

Over the past 18 years, efforts have been made to improve the standards. In 2006, the standards were updated so that those with a rural hukou who lived and worked in cities could get compensation according to the urban standards. In 2010, it was made clear that the same compensation standard should apply to all victims that died but only in the same accident.

That in turn suits the general trend of combining both urban and rural development. Since 2010, over 164 million rural residents have obtained an urban hukou. Many regions have even canceled the past practice of dividing hukou into urban and rural ones. Clearly, it is time to totally get rid of the different compensation standards.

The SPC's move manifests the principle that everybody is equal before the law.