On the Industry Criteria as Soft Law: A Perspective from Health Criteria

Industry criteria of a large quantity are soft laws in China’s industry governance, among which are health industry criteria. The health industry criteria don’t conform to the features of hard law in their forms, while their force is far different from hard law. Health industry criteria are not only the basis of health technology operation, but also the authority of health administrative enforcement. What’s more, they are essential references for the judges to judge the legality of health operation. The reasons why health industry criteria could play the role as law in the governance of health industry rest on three factors. The first is that as soft law, they can make up for the deficiency of hard law. The second is that they meet the need of public governance of healthy industry. The third is that they can use their relation with health hard law to help their enforcement. China’s health industry criteria have certain deficiency in the governance of healthy industry, which needs countermeasures to rectify. Health industry criteria are branch of industry criteria, which means the on such criteria is also applicable to all industry criteria.