Abstract: Catastrophic risks refer to the possibilities and the adverse consequences with unclear incentives, lower probability of occurrence and extremely serious perniciousness, which are difficult to predict, hard to control and unable to effectively deal with. In response to catastrophic risks, the administrative organizations have comparative advantages over the legislative and judiciary organizations and the administrative law has comparative advantages over the criminal law and civil law. But the practice of the administrative organizations’ regulation to control catastrophic risks has posed a challenge to the current China’s traditional administrative legal concepts, the basic principles of administrative law and the existing framework of the legal system for risk control. Thus, it is required to respond from the three major aspects: to transform the regulation logic of catastrophic risk controlled by administrative laws, to breakthrough the basic principles of administrative laws, and to innovate the specific administrative law system.

Key words: catastrophic risk; risk control; administrative legal system