Last December, China’s national legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), heard its Legislative Affairs Commission’s report on efforts to “clean up” [清理] China’s national laws—that is, a systematic review of existing legislation to identify outdated or inconsistent provisions. This was the NPCSC’s third comprehensive cleanup of laws since 1978.1 The first took place at the outset of the Reform Era, leading to a declaration that 148 instruments enacted or approved by the NPCSC had de facto expired. The second round occurred in 2008–09, ahead of the official declaration in 2010 that China had established “a socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics.” It resulted in not only the repeal of eight laws, but also minor amendments to 141 provisions in 59 laws.
On December 27, 2025, the NPCSC adopted a decision approving the Commission’s report. In this “Cleanup Decision,” it also declared that 104 instruments it enacted between 1955 and 2021 had lapsed and were no longer in force, while confirming the continued validity of past actions taken under those instruments.
Neither the Commission’s report nor any legislative record associated with the Cleanup Decision has been published in the latest issue of the NPCSC Gazette, so we do not yet know the Commission’s full findings and reasoning. That said, according to the Cleanup Decision, the Commission also identified another 35 obsolete instruments enacted by the full NPC, which will address them at its 2026 session.
Below, we first provide an overview of those 104 instruments, then focus on several repeals with substantive effects, and finally discuss what may happen at NPC 2026 and beyond.
Overview of the 104 Lapsed Enactments
The 104 documents comprise 7 statutes (i.e., legislation promulgated by presidential orders), 1 legislative interpretation, and 96 quasi-statutory decisions (i.e., legislation adopted without presidential promulgation).
The oldest among them was a quasi-statutory decision adopted on November 8, 1955 that authorized administrative authorities to stop the distribution of and seize six categories of “unlawful” books and magazines. The newest was a decision adopted on October 23, 2021 authorizing pilot reforms of a weights-and-measures scheme in selected cities. (The pilots are still underway under a three-year extension of that original decision.)
The Cleanup Decision placed the 104 instruments into four categories—with one further divided into six subcategories. We instead regrouped them into the following three.
Category I consists of 33 instruments that the Cleanup Decision asserts were incorporated into or superseded by newer legislation, including 17 concerning State Council agencies that were abolished by subsequent government reorganizations. To give a few examples:
- A 1987 decision authorizing China to exercise universal criminal jurisdiction consistent with its treaty obligations was codified as Article 9 of the 1997 Criminal Law [刑法].
- A 2013 resolution allowing families to have two children if one parent was a single child was superseded by further relaxations of birth restrictions.
- A 2014 legislative interpretation clarifying permissible family names was codified as Article 1015 of the 2020 Civil Code [民法典].
- Two decisions from 2016 and 2017 authorizing the establishment of supervision commissions were replaced by the 2018 Constitutional Amendment and Supervision Law [监察法].
The 1996 Township and Village Enterprises Law [乡镇企业法] was also repealed as part of this Category. Those collectively own enterprises flourished in the Chinese countryside from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s and became a main driver of China’s rapid economic growth during that period. Three decades later, there was an apparent consensus among scholars and officials that different parts of the Law had been superseded by newer legislation, including the 2002 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Promotion Law [中小企业促进法], the 2021 Rural Revitalization Promotion Law [乡村振兴促进法], and statutes governing different corporate forms.
Finally, some laws still on the books plainly belong in this Category but were not declared lapsed. For instance, a 2001 decision designating the third Saturday of September as the annual National Defense Education Day for All was effectively codified as Article 12 of the 2024 National Defense Education Law [国防教育法]. It is unclear if the omissions were attributable to oversight or if the legislature has other plans for them.
Category II includes 39 instruments that expired by their own terms. Over half (26) were reform authorizations with explicit expiration dates. The remainder included eight resolutions ordering “law popularization” efforts over specified successive five-year periods, as well as four documents adopted in 1980 and 1981 authorizing deviations from the requirements of the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law [刑事诉讼法] within specified periods.
Category III encompasses 33 instruments authorizing one-off actions or governing specific historical events, primarily ad hoc rules concerning the elections of past NPCs and local people’s congresses.
Quiet Repeal of Legacy 1990s Administrative Offenses
While the Cleanup Decision represents that all Category I instruments have already been “replaced, superseded, or absorbed by new laws,” a closer examination shows this was not true in all cases.
In the 1980s–90s, the NPCSC enacted 23 standalone statutes—which we will call “Crimes Decisions”—to supplement the 1979 Criminal Law by defining and punishing additional offenses. When the NPC comprehensively revised the Criminal Law in 1997, 15 of the Crimes Decisions were fully codified and therefore repealed. As to the other eight, their criminal provisions were superseded by the new criminal code, but their administrative provisions remained in force.
The NPCSC repealed another three in 2008 and 2009 while continuing to chip away at the final five. In 2019, for example, it abolished the “custody and education” [收容教育] administrative detention system under a 1991 decision punishing prostitution and related offenses.
By the time the Cleanup Decision passed, over a dozen administrative offenses under three of the remaining Crimes Decisions (see table below) nonetheless remained valid and enforceable, according to an authoritative list issued by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in 2020. Last year, the NPCSC rejected the MPS’s proposal to codify the 1991 decision’s provision penalizing covered businesses for allowing prostitution to occur on their premises2—which arguably threw the offense’s continued validity in doubt. No intervening legislation codified or abrogated the other offenses.
The NPCSC therefore effected a substantive change in the law by declaring the remaining five Crimes Decisions lapsed. This move could stem from a conscious decision on the legislature’s part to modestly limit the use of administrative detention. Without the relevant legislative records, however, it is difficult to say with certainty.
| Crimes Decision | Offenses* | Penalties |
| Sept. 4, 1991 |
| fines, business suspension, or license revocation |
| June 30, 1995*** |
| detention or fines (art. 21) |
| Oct. 30, 1995*** |
| detention or fines (art. 11) |
And precisely because wiping the last 1990s Crimes Decisions from the statute books carries practical consequences, it is worth taking a moment to examine the procedures for their supposed “repeals.” All five decisions were originally adopted by the NPCSC and promulgated by the PRC president, so they qualified as statutes. Under the Legislation Law [立法法], statutory repeals must likewise be promulgated by the PRC president.
Yet that step was not taken here—a seemingly deliberate omission that was baffling to say the least. The authorities complied with that requirement when repealing the “custody and education” provisions of the 1991 Crimes Decision in 2019. They even did so for the other two statutes in this same batch of 104 instruments. While it is doubtful that any police department would still attempt to enforce those offenses given the national legislature’s unmistakable intent to abolish them, the procedural defect is nonetheless unfortunate.
NPC 2026 and Beyond
As mentioned earlier, last year’s cleanup identified another 35 obsolete enactments that await disposition by the full NPC. On February 26, 2026, as it wrapped up this week’s session, the NPCSC decided to submit a report on “efforts to clean up laws and recommendations for disposing of the relevant statutes and decisions” to the NPC’s annual session next month. After deliberating the report, the NPC is expected to take up a similar bill to declare those enactments lapsed.
While we will not see the full list for a few more weeks, the NPCSC report’s title indicates that the list will include both statutes and quasi-statutory decisions. As to the former, the 1988 Law on Industrial Enterprises Owned by the Whole People [全民所有制工业企业法] seems ripe for repeal (for reasons similar to those justifying the repeal of the Township and Village Enterprises Law). The latter group will likely include, for example, decisions on the allocation of seats in past NPCs.
Lastly, last year’s cleanup may have also identified statutory provisions that need updates to reflect current conditions or eliminate conflicts. If so, the NPCSC could take up bills to implement those changes later this year. Stay tuned.
- The NPCSC has also occasionally carried out targeted cleanups. In late 2012, for example, it amended seven laws to bring them in line with the Criminal Procedure Law [刑事诉讼法] as amended in March 2012. ↩︎
- See 张义健 [Zhang Yijian], 2025年《治安管理处罚法》修订解读 [Explaining the 2025 Revision to the Public Security Administration Punishments Law], 中国法律评论 [China L. Rev.], no. 4, 2025, at 32, 39 (explaining the offense was rejected because scope of punishable conduct was unclear or too broad). Compare Article 85 of the September 2023 draft revision to the Public Security Administration Punishments Law [治安管理处罚法], with Article 87 of the revised Law. ↩︎