NPC Calendar: August 2020

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following draft laws through August 16:

The 13th NPCSC will convene for its 21st session from August 8 to 11 and will review the following bills:

The session will likely also consider a decision dealing with the anticipated vacancy of the Hong Kong Legislative Council after the Hong Kong Chief Executive decided on Friday, July 31 to postpone Council elections (originally scheduled for September 6) by a year. The term of the current Legislative Council will expire on September 30.

For more information, please see this post.

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NPCSC (Early) Session Watch: Copyright, NPC Modernization & National Flag/Emblem (Updated)

UPDATE (July 31, 2020): Today, the Hong Kong Chief Executive officially announced the postponement of the Legislative Council elections to next fall. The central government said in a statement that it would seek a decision by the NPCSC on the one-year vacancy of the Legislative Council after its current term expires on September 30.

We did not wake up today expecting to write this blogpost, yet here we are. On Wednesday, July 29, the Council of Chairpersons decided to convene the 21st session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC)—much to our surprise—from August 8 to 11. For the past three terms, the NPCSC’s regular sessions began only during the last ten days of each month in which it was scheduled to meet (with one exception). And this upcoming session bears all the indications of a regular (August) session: its four-day length, a full batch of bills to review, and the State Council’s mid-year reports on budget implementation and economic development (which are heard in August).

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comments on Draft Patent Law Amendment, Export Control Law, Criminal Law Amendment, Data Security Law & Two Other Bills (Updated)

UPDATE (July 3, 2020): The deadline for comments has been extended to August 16, 2020, from the original July 31.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following six bills through August 16, 2020:

All linked files are PDF documents in Chinese. English translations will be provided if and when available. The accompanying explanations of these drafts can be read here (PDF).

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Legislation Summary: Hong Kong National Security Law

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) unanimously approved the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法] (Law) on the morning of Tuesday, June 30. That afternoon, the NPCSC separately listed the Law in Annex III to the Hong Kong Basic Law so that it can be enforced in the city. The Law took effect in Hong Kong later that day, at 11 p.m., when it was made public for the first time. The NPCSC previously released (via Xinhua) an excerpted explanation of the Law, which we have summarized here. For now, we will not restate what we already covered in that prior summary, in the interest of time. Instead, here, we will focus on the criminal provisions of the Law (which have heretofore been withheld) and other significant provisions that were not previously disclosed.

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NPC Calendar: July 2020

The following laws take effect on July 1:

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the draft Veterans Support Law [退役军人保障法] and draft Rural Revitalization Promotion Law [乡村振兴促进法] through July 21, 2020. We also expect it to seek public comments on the following bills early this month:

The NPCSC will meet for its next regularly scheduled session in late August.

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Legislation Summary: New Statute Governing Public Employees’ Conduct

On June 20, the NPC Standing Committee approved the Law on Governmental Sanctions for Public Employees [公职人员政务处分法] (Law or Governmental Sanctions Law). An unofficial English translation of the Law is available here. This Law is a companion statute of the 2018 Supervision Law [监察法], which established the supervision commissions [监察委员会] and empowers them to “give . . . decisions on governmental sanctions to public employees who have broken the law in accordance with legally prescribed procedures” (art. 45, para. 1, item 2). The Law, with 68 articles in seven chapters, implements this provision by laying down a set of both substantive and procedural disciplinary rules tailor-made for all public employees. Its core provisions start by setting forth the types of governmental sanctions and the general rules on their use, then provide for a long list of unlawful conduct and the corresponding sanctions, and end with the procedures for giving and reviewing sanctions decisions. The following summary will proceed in the same manner.

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comments on Draft Veterans Support Law & Rural Revitalization Promotion Law

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following two bills through July 21, 2020:

All linked files are PDF documents in Chinese. English translations will be provided if and when available. The accompanying explanations of these drafts can be read here (PDF).

The draft Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法] was reviewed together with those two bills last week, but were not released today. Since the NPCSC will meet again on Sunday and will likely adopt that Law, it seems all but certain that the NPCSC will not release a draft of the Law for public comments. We have summarized and analyzed an excerpted explanation of the bill here.

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NPCSC Concludes First June Session Before Immediately Scheduling Another, Likely to Adopt Hong Kong National Security Law (Updated)

UPDATE (July 5, 2020): The NPCSC has unanimously approved the Hong Kong National Security Law and added it to Annex III of the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Law took effect in Hong Kong at 11 p.m. on June 30. Our partial summary of it is here.

UPDATE (June 28, 2020): The draft Hong Kong National Security Law has been added to the agenda of the ongoing NPCSC session. We expect the NPCSC to approve the bill and add it to Annex III to the Hong Kong Basic Law by Tuesday.

The 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its 19th session on Saturday, June 20. It adopted three bills and approved China’s accession to the Arms Trade Treaty. On that same day, the Council of Chairpersons decided to convene the NPCSC again later this month, from June 28 to 30, merely one week after the 19th session. According to the readout of the Council’s meeting, it has placed six bills on the 20th session’s tentative agenda—not including the draft Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法] (Hong Kong National Security Law). But once again the readout concludes the list of bills with the character “等” (or “et cetera”), so the Hong Kong National Security Law could be included in the final agenda at the last minute—again. The NPCSC ordinarily meets once every two months; it has not held two sessions in such close proximity in over at least two decades. It seems to us, then, that the 20th session is scheduled to expedite—and pass—the Hong Kong National Security Law, while ensuring that the NPCSC complies with the Legislation Law’s requirement that new laws be adopted after at least two reviews.

Below, we will briefly review the bills adopted on Saturday and preview the upcoming 20th session, before concluding with the possible next steps for the Hong Kong National Security Law.

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NPC Standing Committee Releases 2020 Legislative Plan

After having kept its 2019 legislative plan a secret, on Saturday, June 20, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) released its legislative plan for 2020. This plan is divided into four parts. The first part, as usual, lists bills that are scheduled for review this year, while the other three lay down some all-encompassing guiding principles for the NPCSC’s legislative work in 2020. We will discuss only the first part below.

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NPCSC Releases Some Details of Draft Hong Kong National Security Law, But Withholds Information on Criminal Provisions

On Saturday, June 20, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) disclosed some details of the highly anticipated draft Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法]. It did not release the draft that it reviewed this week. Rather, the state-run Xinhua News Agency published an excerpt from the explanation of the draft; an unofficial translation of part of the excerpt is available here. As of this writing, the NPCSC has not officially solicited public comments on the draft. Below, we will introduce the main contents of the draft Law (as summarized by the explanation), with brief analysis of certain provisions.

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