UPDATE (Apr. 30, 2025): On April 30, the NPCSC approved the Private Economy Promotion Law (effective May 20, 2025); revised the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (effective Sept. 1, 2025); and adopted a decision authorizing the State Council to temporarily modify a provision of the Seed Law in the Xinjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (effective May 1, 2025).
China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its fifteenth session from April 27 to 30, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Friday, April 18. According to the Council’s proposed agenda, the session will consider eight legislative bills, which we preview below. The Council also approved the NPCSC’s 2025 work priorities as well as 2025 plans for legislative, oversight, delegates-related, and foreign-affairs work. We expect all but the foreign-affairs work plan to be released after the upcoming session, likely in early May.
Returning Bills
Four bills have been scheduled for further review.
First, the draft Private Economy Promotion Law [民营经济促进法] will return for its third—and most likely final—review within merely four months. The first draft released last December, as friend of the site Jamie Horsley observes, “contains little new in terms of legal or policy initiatives”: “It restates existing policies and legal requirements that have failed to resolve the sector’s legal challenges, emphasizes political correctness, and seems unlikely to succeed on its own to substantially reassure private investors and spark entrepreneurial enthusiasm.” The second draft from February was not released for public comment, but state media reported minor changes. We expect the same for the final version to be published at the end of the month.
Second, the draft revision to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases [传染病防治法] will also return for its third and final review. We intend to say more about this bill once it has passed.
Finally, the draft Atomic Energy Law [原子能法] and the draft revision to the Arbitration Law [仲裁法] both return for their second review, and we expect an additional round of deliberations awaits each.
New Bills
Four new bills have been submitted for review.
The Council of Chairpersons submitted a draft Ecological and Environmental Code [生态环境法典]—or Environmental Code for short. Once enacted, it will become China’s second formal statutory code, after the 2020 Civil Code [民法典]. China now has more than 30 statutes and over 100 administrative regulations on environmental protection, in addition to myriad agency rules and national standards. Like the Civil Code, the Environmental Code will not simply “copy and paste” existing national legislation. Rather, it will restate existing law while making the necessary amendments and additions to resolve inconsistencies and fill statutory gaps. The 14th NPCSC included the Environmental Code in its five-year legislative plan in fall 2023, aiming to pass it within its term. The project was then explicitly named in the Communist Party’s 2024 Third Plenum decision, which further underscores its significance.
As recommended by leading scholars and according to our sources, the Environmental Code’s core substantive provisions will likely be grouped into three parts: (1) pollution prevention and control; (2) ecological conservation; and (3) green and low-carbon development. The first is expected to replace existing laws addressing various forms of pollution, including air, water, soil, noise, solid waste, and radioactive pollution. The second part on conservation is likely to incorporate statutes that protect wild animals and offshore islands and those that address soil erosion and desertification, as well as State Council regulations on matters such as wild plants, nature reserves, and prevention of grassland fires. The third part on green and low-carbon development will absorb existing laws on energy conservation, renewable energy, cleaner production, and circular economy, but is otherwise likely to consist mostly of new provisions. Finally, there are several environmental laws currently in the pipeline, like the National Parks Law [国家公园法], and it would be interesting to see how the legislature handles them.
As with the Civil Code, the NPCSC will review the whole codification bill at its initial review later this month. At subsequent sessions, it will take up one or two parts at a time so that each division of the Code is reviewed twice or more. Then, it will discuss the whole bill again, before submitting it to a plenary session of the NPC for a final review, which is expected to occur in March 2027.
The State Council submitted the remaining three bills:
- Draft Law on National Development Plans [国家发展规划法]. This legislative project first appeared in the 12th NPCSC’s five-year legislative plan (2013–18), before being included in the 13th (2016–2020) and 14th (2021–25) Five-Year Plans for National Economic and Social Development. While the precise scope of the Law is not yet clear, pioneering provincial legislation on the same subject may offer some hints. Jiangsu’s provincial regulations on development plans (as revised in 2024), for example, use “development plans” to mean the province’s five-year plans for economic and social development. The legislation therefore regulates the contents, drafting, enforcement, and oversight of five-year plans and their implementing sectoral and regional plans. The forthcoming national law likely has an analogous scope. We expect the NPCSC to conduct another review of the bill toward the end of 2025, before submitting it to the NPC’s 2026 session for a final review, coinciding with its expected approval of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan.
- Draft revision to the Prisons Law [监狱法]. This Law was originally enacted in 1994 and, except for limited amendments in 2012 to harmonize it with the amended Criminal Procedure Law [刑事诉讼法], has never been updated. The NPCSC first placed the Law’s revision on the agenda in 2023. Last year, a research team affiliated with the Ministry of Justice—which oversees the prison system and heads the bill’s drafting—issued a series of recommendations for revising the Law. These include equipping prisons with adequate professional staff (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, teachers, etc.); conducting risk assessments of prisoners and formulating individualized correctional plans; guaranteeing exercise time and expanding prisoners’ contact with the outside world; offering prisoners mental health services; and involving social groups in rehabilitation. We expect the revision to pass after three reviews.
- Draft decision authorizing the temporary suspension of certain provisions of the Seed Law [种子法] in the Xinjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ). The Xinjiang FTZ was established in November 2023. According to the Zone’s founding document, the central government will, among a variety of other initiatives, “explore” delegating the authority to issue “seed production and operation licenses” to businesses engaged in the import and export of crop seeds to Xinjiang’s provincial agricultural department. Under Article 31 of the Seed Law (as amended in 2021), however, that authority rests solely with national agricultural and forestry authorities. The forthcoming decision is therefore expected to suspend this provision within the Xinjiang FTZ and replace it with the aforementioned modification. We expect the NPCSC to approve the decision at the upcoming session.