On Wednesday, May 8, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), released its legislative work plan for 2024 (Plan). The Plan was preliminarily approved by the Council of Chairpersons in December 2023 and finalized on April 16. It sets forth priorities for all aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work in 2024, which include a list of legislative projects slated for review or research this year. Other aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work include dealing with expiring reform authorizations; conducting constitutional review of draft laws; improving the quality of legislation and legislative procedure; and raising public awareness of the NPC’s legislative activities. As usual, we will focus on the list of legislative projects in this post, but will also note a few other notable tasks included in the Plan.
China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), is soliciting public comment on the following six bills through May 25, 2024:
English translations will be provided if and when available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese and compiled in a single PDF; the links above will take you to the corresponding pages in the PDF only if you use a desktop browser—this does not work on a phone or a tablet.
To submit comment online, please refer to this guide. Comments can also be mailed to the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission [全国人大常委会法制工作委员会] at the following address:
UPDATE (Apr. 26, 2024): On April 26, 2024, the NPCSC approved the Academic Degrees Law (effective Jan. 1, 2025) and the Tariff Law (effective Dec. 1, 2024). It also adopted the amendments to the Agricultural Technology Popularization Law, Minors Protection Law, and Biosecurity Law. For reasons unknown, the State Council’s request for an authorization to pilot reforms of the Food Safety Law in the Hainan Free Trade Port was not put to a vote.
Wind farm in Shanxi. Photo by Hahaheditor12667 (cropped). CC BY-SA 4.0.
China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its ninth session from April 23 to 26, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Tuesday, April 16. The Council proposed an agenda with ten legislative bills, which we preview below. It also approved the NPCSC’s 2024 work priorities as well as 2024 plans for legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work, which we expect will be released after the upcoming session.
A draft version of this post was published earlier by mistake. We apologize for the error and the confusion.
The 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene for its 9th session in late April. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet in mid-April to decide on the agenda and dates of the session.
The session is likely to review the following bills:
The NPCSC is expected to release its 2024 work priorities and 2024 plans for legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work after this month’s session.
The second session of China’s 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) concluded on Monday, March 11. Below we have compiled a list of all official documents from this session (except for two legislative documents the NPC has so far neglected to release). We have also linked to the submitted (i.e., draft) version of six main reports for your reference. Unless otherwise noted, the documents are available in Chinese only. The vote results for each bill and resolution are listed below in brackets, in the order of yea–nay–abstention.
On Friday, March 8, 2024, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) unveiled a controversial Safeguarding National Security Bill(Bill) to discharge the city’s duty under Article 23 of its Basic Law to enact national security legislation and to supplement the Hong Kong National Security Law (HKNSL) that was imposed on the city in 2020. The government’s sprawling proposals would create an array of broadly worded offenses, including treason, insurrection, crimes relating to state secrets, and “external interference,” and generally limit the due process rights of those accused of national security offenses (whether under the Bill, the HKNSL, or any other law).
Li Qiang presides over the second plenary meeting of the State Council on August 16, 2023.
On March 11, 2024, China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress, voted 2883 to 8, with 9 abstentions, to revise the State Council Organic Law [国务院组织法]—the first update of the statute since its enactment in December 1982. As part of a Communist Party-directed effort to “improve the organic laws of state institutions,” the revision seeks to modernize the governing statute of China’s central government. It memorializes some of the core principles and practices concerning State Council operation that have developed since 1982 and harmonizes the statute with later-enacted laws. For instance, the revision specifies the State Council’s constitutional status, guiding ideologies, and relationship with other state organs; clarifies the functions of different State Council meetings; and incorporates existing policy measures to develop a “law-based government” [法治政府]. The practical significance of these changes is thus minimal. But they nonetheless hold great symbolic value (e.g., by codifying the State Council’s duty to uphold the Party’s leadership) or can serve an important signaling purpose (e.g., by writing into law the principle of “adhering to transparency in government affairs”).
That does not change the fact, however, that the Law remains minimalist. With only 20 articles (increased from 11), it is not only the shortest state-organ organic law but also one of the shortest national laws overall. More detailed rules on the State Council’s operation are (still) found in lower-level authorities like the latest State Council Work Rules [国务院工作规则]. For this reason, instead of providing an even shorter summary, we are posting a full translation of the revised Law below, with comments on selected provisions. 🆕 marks newly added articles, whereas 🔄 marks those without substantive changes. The remaining articles were all amended to some extent, though we won’t comment on every one of them. For details, please refer to this comparison chart (in Chinese).
China’s national legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee (NPCSC), has the constitutional power and duty to “oversee the enforcement of the Constitution.” Yet for decades this task had remained a low priority for the legislature. Since Xi Jinping took power in late 2012, he has “elevated the Party’s rhetorical commitment to the Constitution” on numerous occasions. For instance, in writing to commemorate the current Constitution’s 40th anniversary in December 2022, Xi stressed the need to “continuously enhance constitutional enforcement and supervision”—and to, of course, do so under the Party’s leadership. Against this backdrop, the NPCSC has made constitutional enforcement a more significant and visible part of its work; its annual work reports to the NPC have included dedicated sections on “constitutional enforcement” [宪法实施]1 since 2020.
On February 23, possibly starting a new yearly practice, the legislature posted on its official website a report on its efforts to “strengthen and innovate constitutional enforcement” in 2023, written by the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission’s Office for Constitution.2 The report is worth reading for it not only discloses new constitutional practices from the past year that may have escaped most people’s attention, but also catalogs the kinds of activities that officially constitute “constitutional enforcement.” The report also likely serves as the basis for the section in the NPCSC’s forthcoming 2024 work report on constitutional enforcement. Below, we will discuss the report through a mix of summary and translation: parts that we found particularly noteworthy will be translated and annotated, whereas the rest will be summarized to varying extents. We added some paragraph breaks and text formatting in blockquotes to improve readability.
China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) has released its 2024 session’s agenda and daily schedule of meetings, as well as a preliminary schedule of press events during the session. This year’s session will open on the morning of March 5 and close on the afternoon of March 11, lasting seven full days, consistent with Covid-era norms. But in a break with long-standing tradition, and for the first time since 1993, the premier will not hold a press conference after this session, or during the reminder of this NPC’s term “absent special circumstances,” a spokesperson announced on March 4.
All times below are in China Standard Time (UTC +8:00). For a primer on the NPC and its annual sessions, check out this FAQ.
In the latest issue of our newsletter, we focus on the remedies for the denial or revocation of degrees under China’s new Degrees Law, as well as the new Tariff Law in the context of China’s broader effort to achieve “law-based taxation.”
