On this last day of the eventful 2016—which brought us a Trump Presidency, Brexit, not the most celebrity deaths in a year (per CNN), and of concern to this Blog, a series of significant yet oftentimes controversial actions by the NPCSC—I took some time to review the NPC and this Blog’s 2016 and to preview their 2017 as well.
Month: December 2016
NPCSC Solicits Public Comments on Draft Laws: Dec. 26, 2016 (UPDATED)
Dec. 27, 2016 Update: The deadline has been extended.
The NPCSC has released the following draft laws for public comments until January 26, 2017.
- General Provisions of the Civil Code (Third Deliberation Draft) (民法总则草案三次审议稿)
- Amendment to the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law (Draft) (水污染防治法修正案草案)
- E-Commerce Law (Draft) (电子商务法草案)
All links are to PDF files, and all files are in Chinese only. Links to other formats will be added if and when they become available.
Please refer to this post for ways to comment on these legislations. Click here to submit comments online.
The NPCSC also reviewed a draft National Intelligence Law at its last session, but we are not optimistic about the prospect of its being released for public comments.
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25th Session Watch Pt. 4: More Information on the State Supervision System Reform (UPDATED)
Update (Nov. 6, 2017): This post has been superseded by this one, published on November 5, 2017.
Update (Feb. 13, 2017): This post has been updated to clarify the range of personnel subject to supervision by the supervision commissions.
In the decision to carry out pilots programs of the state supervision system reform, the NPCSC details the composition, duties, and powers of the supervision commissions (see here for our prior discussion of this reform), as well as the legal provisions that will no longer be enforced in the pilot regions. The main content is summarized below, followed by a few comments.
An English translation of the Decision is underway at China Law Translate.
25th Session Watch Pt. 3: NPCSC Passes New Laws and Reform Authorizations
Yesterday, the 12th NPCSC concluded its last session in 2016 with the passage of three new laws and several decisions concerning reforms of various areas. The following is a quick summary of the outcome of this Session. For those of you who are looking for more information on the anti-corruption system reform, please see this post instead.
Continue reading “25th Session Watch Pt. 3: NPCSC Passes New Laws and Reform Authorizations”
25th Session Watch Pt. 2: NPCSC Reviewing a Draft National Intelligence Law—in Secrecy
As was revealed late last Monday, the tentative agenda of the current NPCSC session (which we discussed in the last post) had undergone several changes. The most notable was a new draft law named National Intelligence Law. The press release of the first meeting of the 25th Session contained the following short paragraph on this draft law:
In order to strengthen and safeguard national intelligence efforts, and to defend national security and interests, the State Council submitted a draft National Intelligence Law for deliberation. Entrusted by the State Council, CHEN Wenqing, the Minister of State Security, made an explanation.
What was unusual, however, was the complete lack of media coverage of this law in the four days since. State media did not report on the content of the law, nor on the NPCSC members’ discussion of the law yesterday. While national security legislations are “sensitive” in nature, and their media coverage is normally tightly controlled, the absence of any report is still a deviation from the usual course of action.
Continue reading “25th Session Watch Pt. 2: NPCSC Reviewing a Draft National Intelligence Law—in Secrecy”25th Session Watch Pt. 1: NPCSC to Consider E-Commerce Law and Several Reform Authorizations
The 12th NPCSC will convene for its next session, which will be the last one in 2016, from December 19 to 25, the Council of Chairmen decided on Monday. The Council also proposed a preliminary agenda for the 25th Session, which features six legislative bills, three authorizations of reforms, and several items pertaining to next year’s NPC plenary session and the upcoming 13th NPC. As usual, in the first part of this installment of Session Watch, we’ll take a look at the agenda of the upcoming session.