China has instituted a system of regional autonomy in minority areas. Ethnic regional autonomous areas include autonomous regions, autonomous prefectures and autonomous counties. The formulation of separate regulations in ethnic autonomous areas is based on the Constitution, the Law of Regional National Autonomy, and Legislative Law. Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture has always attached great importance to the legislative work of the separate regulations, in order to effectively implement the Regulations of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture by the content, and substantiate it from politics, economy, culture, education and other aspects, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture follows the principles of Scientific legislation and Democratic legislation , from 1988 to the end of 2015, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture People's Congress had formulated 49 separate regulations. Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture has developed a number of separate regulations, and it walks in the forefront of the national autonomous areas. The regulations cover a wide range, including 12 major areas of economic management, resource utilization and environmental protection, Korean culture, education, sports and historical and cultural protection and so on. Parts of the separate regulations reflect the distinctive local and national characteristics. The promulgation and implementation of the 49 separate regulations provide an important legal basis for Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture to exercise autonomy rights, and provide a powerful legal guarantee for the political, economic, cultural and national unity of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.
Although the legislative achievements of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture are fruitful, there are still a lot of problems in the formulation and implementation of the regulations. These problems are mainly manifested in the following aspects: First, the contents of some special regulations fail to fully reflect the local and national characteristics, and just copy the contents of laws and administrative regulations, and local regulations. Second, separate regulations consideration through the cycle is too long. Since 2007,"The Korean Medicine’s development of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture Regulation" and other 13 separate regulations’ approval time are all more than four months of the statutory approval period. Third, some of the separate regulations ‘articles are difficult to operate and their practicality is greatly reduced. Fourth, the separate regulations ‘s legislative assessment is lack , and the revision of them is also lagging behind ,so far there are only 9 separate regulations amended.
The Communist Party of China proposed Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on a number of major issues concerning the overall promotion of the rule of law in the eighteenth session of the fourth plenary session, which puts forward new requirements for the rule of law in Ethnic Affairs. For the development of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture‘s all undertakings, Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture should continue to strengthen the legislative work of the separate regulations, continuously improve the legislative quality of the separate regulations, and promote the implementation of separate regulations .Stated thus, we should expand the range of separate regulations -making body, and give the legislative powers of exercising the separate regulations’ legislation to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress when the congress is not in session. We should further broaden the scope of the adjustment of the separate regulations and make Anti drug regulations of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Promote the service for the aged regulations of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and other urgently-needed regulations as soon as possible .In order to implement the autonomy, we should further highlight the local and national characteristics in the legislative content. Legislators should fully recognize and understand the political, economic and cultural characteristics of the local ethnic groups, and formulate separate regulations on the basis of local and national characteristics. We should further improve the legislative procedures for separate regulations, speed up the approval time for separate regulations, and strengthen the assessment of the legislation of the separate regulations.