The decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to set up a reasonable index system and evaluation standard of legal construction. To implement the spirit of the 18th National People’s Congress and the third session of the 18^th Central Committee, based on Guidelines for Comprehensively Promoting “Administration by Law”, Decision on Strengthening the Administration by Law in the Municipal and County Governments, Opinions on Strengthening the Building of a Government Ruled by Law and other regulatory documents, the School of Law-based Government of China University of Political Science and Law (hereinafter referred to as SLBG) issued the assessment index system of government by law in China (hereinafter referred to as assessment index system). As an independent third institution, we started to do a comprehensive observation and evaluation of law-based government’s construction condition in 100 important cities in a phased and successive process.

Assessment index system has nine A-level indicators. There are eight indicators as objective assessment, namely, organ function, organizational leadership of law-based administration, system construction, administrative decision, administrative enforcement, government information disclosure, supervision and accountability, and social conflict and administrative dispute solution. These eight aspects almost can cover up all important areas in legal government construction.  Public satisfaction survey is a subjective assessment designed with ten questions. The ten public concerned questions written into public satisfaction questionnaires give out in evaluated cities to grade each question by public opinions.

The evaluated 100 cities can be divided into four categories: i. municipalities (4); ii. cities in which people’s government of provinces or autonomous regions located (27); iii. bigger cities approved by the State Council (23); iv. other cities selected according to population scale (46).