UPDATE (Sept. 13, 2024): On Friday, September 13, the NPCSC revised the National Defense Education Law (effective Sept. 21, 2024) and amended the Statistics Law (effective immediately), while releasing six other bills for public comment through October 12. The NPCSC also adopted a decision conferring state honors on various individuals to mark the PRC’s 70th anniversary and a decision on gradually raising the statutory retirement ages (effective Jan. 1, 2025).
UPDATE (Sept. 10, 2024): According to the official readout of the NPCSC’s meeting on September 10, it is also considering a draft decision, submitted by the State Council, to “gradually raise the statutory retirement ages.” The readout has not offered any other information about the bill, which we expect to pass on Friday.
China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its eleventh session from September 10 to 13, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Tuesday, August 27. The session will consider eight legislative bills, according to the Council’s proposed agenda. The session will also adopt a decision to confer state honors on a slate of individuals nominated by the Communist Party to mark the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic on October 1. The legislature likely has delayed its typical August session to mid-September to announce the conferral decision closer to the National Day holiday. (Five years ago, it held a special session on September 17 for that very purpose.) Lastly, the session will hear a few reports that might be of interest. We preview these agenda items below.
Returning Bills
Five bills have been scheduled for further review.
First, the draft revision to the National Defense Education Law [国防教育法] and the draft amendment to the Statistics Law [统计法] return for their second—and most likely final—review. We will cover them in our newsletter after they pass.
Second, the draft revision to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases [传染病防治法], the draft Energy Law [能源法], and the draft revision to the Anti–Money Laundering Law [反洗钱法] also return for their second review. While one additional round of deliberations likely awaits each of them, we cannot rule out the possibility that the NPCSC might also approve them next month.
New Bills
Four new bills have been submitted for review.
First, the State Council submitted a draft Public Health Emergency Response Law [突发公共卫生事件应对法]. This project was not part of the legislature’s April 2020 special legislative plan to improve public-health legislation. But, in June 2020, Xi Jinping disclosed in a speech to a group of public-health experts and scholars that the authorities had decided to enact such a law. This law is expected to build on the State Council’s Public Health Emergency Response Regulations [突发公共卫生事件应急条例], promulgated soon after the 2003 SARS epidemic, and to draw on China’s Covid-response experience. Once enacted, it will become a key pillar of China’s public health legislation alongside the (recently revised) Emergency Response Law [突发事件应对法] (which covers all types of emergencies) and the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases now under revision (which focuses on one subset of public health emergencies: outbreaks of infectious diseases). A key task for lawmakers, therefore, is to ensure coordination among the three statutes and minimize overlaps and conflicts. We expect the bill to pass after three reviews.
Second, the State Council also submitted a draft National Parks Law [国家公园法]. The Party first decided to “establish a system of national parks” at its 2013 Third Plenum, and placed national legislation on national parks on the official to-do list in 2017. After several years of trial run, China officially established the first (and so far the only) batch of five national parks in late 2021. A few months later, the National Park Administration released a draft National Parks Law for public comment. According to the draft, the law would govern, among others, the process for planning and establishing national parks, the conservation and management of national parks, as well as the provision of public services and law enforcement in national parks. We expect this bill to pass after two or three reviews.
Third, the State Supervision Commission submitted a draft amendment to the Supervision Law [监察法]. The Party recently called for updating this law at the Third Plenum in July. As we wrote in covering the Plenum’s resulting policy document:
The Supervision Law, enacted 2018, is the organic statute of supervision commissions, China’s state anti-corruption bodies, which are one and the same as the Party’s disciplinary inspection commissions at the corresponding levels. The Law prescribes the organizational structure of supervision commissions and outlines the scope of their authority and the procedures they ought to follow. A bill to update the Law has been scheduled for review in 2024, and a draft was reportedly circulated among the disciplinary apparatus for comment in late 2023. So far, there has been little public information on the proposed changes, however.
Depending on the scope of the draft amendment, it may pass after two or three reviews.
Finally, as already mentioned, the Council of Chairpersons submitted a bill to confer state honors on 14 individuals to celebrate the PRC’s 75th anniversary. Four of them will receive the Medal of the Republic [共和国勋章], which by law is awarded to “distinguished individuals who have made enormous contributions and performed remarkable feats in the building of socialism with Chinese characteristics and in defending the State.” They include three past recipients of China’s Highest Science and Technology Award—one aerospace engineer, one hematologist, and one agronomist—as well as a 93-year-old veteran of the Chinese Civil War and Korean War. The other ten nominees come from a variety of fields, including engineering, cinema, social sciences, sports, and healthcare, and will receive as-yet unannounced state honorary titles in recognition of their “major contributions to” and “renown in” their respective fields. In total, the Party’s 14 nominees include two women, one ethnic minority, and one non-Party individual; three nominees are being honored posthumously. Once the NPCSC adopts the bill next month, Xi Jinping, in his capacity as PRC president, will sign an order to formally confer the honors. The authorities are expected to hold a ceremony on the eve of the National Day to honor the recipients. For an introduction to China’s state honors system, please check out this explainer:
Next month, the NPCSC will also hear two reports by the State Council on, respectively, the Chinese economy and budget implementation in the first half of 2024, as well as its report on the management of government debt in 2023.
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