Year: 2018

Translation: Communist Party’s Proposals for Amending the P.R.C. Constitution (2018) (Updated)

Editor’s Note (Jan. 5, 2023): The NPC adopted a Constitutional Amendment based on the following Proposals on March 11, 2018. Readers are strongly recommended to consult our translation and annotations of the Amendment instead of this post.

UPDATE (Feb. 26, 2018): This translation now also appears on China Law Translate.

The Communist Party today released full text of its proposals for amending the P.R.C. Constitution, which are translated below. In translating this document, we mostly followed the official English translation of the Constitution that is available on the NPC’s website. Some texts below are formatted to enhance readability. Our comments are in brackets. The translation is subject to further modifications.

As we have said before, the Constitutional Amendment eventually adopted by the NPC in March will most likely be identical to the following proposals, except for the use of maybe one or two characters or punctuations. No governmental or Party entity is publicly soliciting comments on the following proposals.

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NPCSC Revises Oath-Taking Provisions, Releases List of 13th NPC Delegates & Extends IPO Reform

The 12th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its last session on Saturday. First, it revised its Decision on Implementing the Constitutional Oath System (English translation here), adopted in mid-2015. It made threefold changes to the original Decision: (1) The oath is slightly modified based on President Xi Jinping’s report to the Party’s 19th Congress; (2) language relating to supervision commissions is inserted where appropriate; and (3) the national anthem is required to be played and sung at oath-taking ceremonies per the National Anthem Law enacted last year. We have translated the revised Decision here.

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Translation: NPCSC Decision on Implementing the Constitutional Oath System (2018 Revision)

全国人民代表大会常务委员会关于实行宪法宣誓制度的决定
Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Implementing the Constitutional Oath System

（2015年7月1日第十二届全国人民代表大会常务委员会第十五次会议通过　
2018年2月24日第十二届全国人民代表大会常务委员会第三十三次会议修订）
(Adopted by the 15th Session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress on July 1, 2015;
Revised by the 33rd Session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress on February 24, 2018)

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NPCSC to Prepare for Upcoming NPC Session & Revise Oath-taking Provisions

The 12th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene its 33rd—and also the last—session from February 23 to 24, the Council of Chairmen decided on Saturday. Most items on the agenda concern the upcoming 1st Session of the 13th NPC starting on March 5—for example, a list of people invited to observe this NPC session. The 33rd session will also certify results of the elections of delegates to the 13th NPC. The full list of delegates, expected to include around 2,970 names (along with their genders and ethnicities), will be released on February 24. But the delegates’ other information, including political affiliation and educational background, most likely won’t be released until after this year’s NPC session.

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Translation: Second Draft of the Supervision Law (监察法二次审议稿)

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) conducted a second reading of the draft Supervision Law [监察法] in late December 2017, but has yet to release the second draft for public comments. With the 2018 NPC session only a month away, we think there is now no realistic possibility that the NPCSC will do so. That said, we do have a copy of the second draft that was released by the China Law Review on its WeChat account. For various reasons, including the fact that this document reflects all the changes made to the first draft as reported by statemedia, we are convinced of its authenticity.

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NPC Calendar: February 2018

The 12th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene for its 33rd—and last—session in late February. The Council of Chairmen is expected to meet to set the dates and agenda for the session before the week-long Chinese New Year holiday begins on February 15.

This session will certify results of the currently ongoing elections of the delegates to the 13th NPC, which will first convene on March 5. An explanation of the guidelines for these elections can be found here.

We also expect the upcoming session to hear the State Council’s mid-term report on a pilot reform of the social insurance system. Authorized by the NPCSC in late 2016, the reform suspends the enforcement of two provisions of the Social Insurance Law in twelve cities so as to combine the maternity insurance funds and the basic health insurance funds, which would have been run separately under the suspended provisions.

We expect only a few (perhaps one or two) legislative bills to be submitted to the session for deliberation. Possible candidates include the draft E-Commerce Law and the draft Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Law.

(Editing by Changhao Wei)

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NPCSC Now Researching Expansion of Constitutional Review

In a recent exclusive interview with the Legal Daily, LIANG Ying (梁鹰), director of the Office for Recording and Reviewing Regulations under the Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) of the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), revealed that authorities are now contemplating significant expansion of the scope of constitutional review (合宪性审查), following the Communist Party’s decision to “advance constitutional review” at its 19th Congress. The theoretical and practical feasibility of the reforms that Liang mentioned was still under research. And it is unknown at this point whether, or when, those proposed reforms would be implemented. But the fact that the authorities have chosen to disclose them indicates similar reforms will be eventually implemented. This interview is thus worth paying close attention to. Some unorganized thoughts follow the summary of the interview. All emphases below are ours.

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NPCSC to Convene Special Session to Consider Draft Constitutional Amendment (UPDATED)

UPDATE (Jan. 30, 2018): The NPCSC decided to convene the 2018 NPC session on March 5, 2018, as expected. The Party’s proposals for amending the Constitution have yet to be released.

The Council of Chairmen decided today to convene the second special session—also the 32nd session—of the 12th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) from January 29 to 30, 2018.1 This short two-day session will focus on two things: (1) deliberating a constitutional amendment drafted on the basis of the Communist Party’s proposals for amending the Constitution that were approved last week; and (2) considering a decision to convene the 1st Session of the 13th NPC.

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Recording & Review: An Introduction to Constitutional Review with Chinese Characteristics

Editor’s Note (Sept. 2, 2020): This post is outdated and has been superseded by a more recent introduction to “recording and review,” which discusses the latest governing rules.

On October 18, 2017, halfway through his mind-numbing three-hour report to the Communist Party’s 19th National Congress, President Xi Jinping called for “advancing the work of constitutional review” [推进合宪性审查工作]. We then noted, and Chinese media later confirmed, that it was the first time such expression appeared in Party documents. While the expression might be novel, the concept of constitutional review is not—it has been an inherent part of “recording and review” (“R&R”) [备案审查] since at least 1982. For purposes of our discussion,1 R&R is a process whereby various governmental entities with lawmaking powers record the legislation they enact with the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), and the NPCSC then, through several established mechanisms, review such legislation for potential violations of the Constitution and national laws and take appropriate actions. The primary goal is to ensure uniformity in the hierarchical legal system.

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