Analysis of 13th NPCSC Legislative Plan Pt. 2: Statistics

Two years ago this month, the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) released its five-year legislative plan (Plan or 5YLP), a blueprint for its legislative agenda through 2023. This Plan, like its previous iterations, includes three categories of legislative projects. Category I projects are relatively ripe and should “in principle” be completed within the 13th NPCSC’s term (ending in March 2023), whereas Category II projects are less so and require additional work. Both Category I and Category II projects are numbered. By contrast, Category III includes a series of unnumbered topics for potential legislation, which was deemed not entirely feasible at the time.

Soon after this Plan was released, we published a mostly qualitative analysis, comparing it with previous Plans and distilling a few themes from it. In this long delayed second (and final) part of our analysis, we will take a primarily quantitative approach, examining the Plan and its five predecessors (the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th NPCSCs’ 5YLPs) from a few different angles.

Continue reading “Analysis of 13th NPCSC Legislative Plan Pt. 2: Statistics” →

NPC Calendar: September 2020

The Resource Tax Law [资源税法] and the revised Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste [固体废物污染环境防治法] take effect on September 1.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is seeking public comments on the following bills through September 30, 2020:

The NPCSC will convene for its next regularly scheduled session in late October.

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Recording & Review: A Reintroduction

In early 2018, we first gave a detailed introduction to “recording and review” (R&R) [备案审查], an increasingly notable aspect of the oversight by the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC). For our purposes here, and generally speaking, R&R is a process whereby various governmental bodies with lawmaking authority record their enactments with the NPCSC, which may then review the recorded legislation on certain grounds and order corrective actions if the legislation does not pass muster.[1] R&R has led to some positive developments in Chinese law since our initial introduction. A few months ago, for instance, it led to the NPCSC’s abolition of “custody and education” [收容教育]—a decades-old extrajudicial detention system targeting prostitution.

The biggest update to the R&R scheme since its inception came last December. That month, the Council of Chairpersons approved the Working Measures for the Recording and Review of Regulations and Judicial Interpretations (Measures) [法规、司法解释备案审查工作办法], which were then quietly released in the NPCSC Gazette’s March issue. This is a noteworthy piece of authority: not only does it supplement the two main governing statutes—the Legislation Law [立法法] and the Law on Oversight by the Standing Committees of the People’s Congresses at All Levels (Oversight Law) [各级人民代表大会常务委员会监督法]—by filling in the procedural gaps, but more importantly, it elaborates on the existing grounds for review and also introduces brand-new ones. We thus would like to take this opportunity to reintroduce the NPCSC’s R&R practice, as now undertaken under these new rules. All citations below are to the Measures unless otherwise indicated.

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comments on Draft Copyright Law Amendment, National Flag & Emblem Laws Amendments, NPC Organizational & Procedural Rules Amendments & Two Other Bills

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following seven bills through September 30, 2020:

Draft NameChinese TextExplanatory Document
Copyright Law (2nd Draft Amendment)
著作权法修正案草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Law (2nd Draft Revision)
预防未成年人犯罪法修订草案二次审议稿		PDF
(English)		PDF
Animal Epidemic Prevention Law (2nd Draft Revision)
动物防疫法修订草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
National Flag Law (Draft Amendment)
国歌法修正草案		PDFPDF
National Emblem Law (Draft Amendment)
国徽法修正草案		PDFPDF
NPC Organic Law (Draft Amendment)
全国人民代表大会组织法修正草案		PDFPDF
NPC Rules of Procedure (Draft Amendment)
全国人民代表大会议事规则修正草案		PDFPDF

English translations will be provided if and when available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese.

Continue reading “NPCSC Seeks Public Comments on Draft Copyright Law Amendment, National Flag & Emblem Laws Amendments, NPC Organizational & Procedural Rules Amendments & Two Other Bills” →

NPCSC Extends Term of Incumbent Hong Kong Legislature, Authorizes Hong Kong & Macau Lawyers to Practice in Mainland & Approves Two Tax Laws

The 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its twenty-first session on Tuesday, August 11. It adopted five bills, most notably a decision allowing the incumbent Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) to continue serving for at least another year after its original term expires next month. We will focus on this decision below and briefly summarize the other bills.

Continue reading “NPCSC Extends Term of Incumbent Hong Kong Legislature, Authorizes Hong Kong & Macau Lawyers to Practice in Mainland & Approves Two Tax Laws” →

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).

Continue reading “NPCSC (Early) Session Watch: Copyright, NPC Modernization & National Flag/Emblem (Updated)” →

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).

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

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.

Continue reading “Legislation Summary: Hong Kong National Security Law” →

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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