Changhao Wei

Changhao Wei is the founder, manager, and editor of NPC Observer. He is a Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center of Yale Law School, where he focuses on China’s legislative process and constitutional enforcement mechanisms. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, and a bachelor’s degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles.

NPC Calendar: June 2026

The 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene for its 23rd session in late June. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet in mid-June to decide on the agenda and dates of the session.

The session is expected to review the draft Financial Stability Law [金融稳定法] and the recently submitted revision to the Bid Invitation and Bidding Law [招标投标法]. It may also take up the draft revision to the Law on the People’s Bank of China [中国人民银行法] approved by the State Council on May 21.

In addition, one or more of the following pending bills are likely to return for further review:

Finally, the session may also consider one or more bills that the NPCSC has tentatively scheduled for an initial review in 2026.

China’s National Legislature Releases 2026 Legislative Plan

Photo by Markus Mainka (stock.adobe.com)

On Monday, May 11, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), released its legislative work plan for 2026 (Plan). The Plan was preliminarily approved by the Council of Chairpersons in December 2025 and finalized on April 20. It sets forth priorities for all aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work in 2026, including the legislative projects slated for review or research this year. Other priorities concern conducting constitutional review of draft laws, improving legislative procedure, and publicizing its legislative activities, among others. As usual, we will focus on the list of legislative projects in this post.

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NPC Calendar: May 2026

The following laws take effect on May 1:

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is seeking public comment on the following bills through May 29:

The NPCSC is expected to release its 2026 work priorities as well as 2026 plans for legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work sometime this month.

It will convene for its next regularly scheduled session in late June.

Chinese Legislature Seeks Public Comment on 6 Bills: Defense Mobilization, State-Owned Enterprise Assets, Healthcare, Water Resources & Agriculture

China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), is soliciting public comment on the following six bills through May 29, 2026.

Draft NameChinese TextExplanatory Document
Healthcare Security Law (2nd Draft)
医疗保障法草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Cultivated Land Protection and Quality Improvement Law (2nd Draft)
耕地保护和质量提升法草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Law on the State-Owned Assets of Enterprises (Draft Revision)
企业国有资产法修订草案		PDF 🆚PDF
Agriculture Law (Draft Revision)
农业法修订草案		PDF 🆚PDF
National Defense Mobilization Law (Draft Revision)
国防动员法修订草案		PDFPDF
Water Law (Draft Revision)
水法修订草案		PDF 🆚PDF

English translations will be provided if available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese and compiled in a single PDF; the links above will take you to the corresponding pages in the PDF.

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NPCSC Session Watch: Prison Administration, Social Welfare, Defense Mobilization, State-Owned Enterprise Assets, Water Resources & Agriculture

The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Photo by sinitar (stock.adobe.com).

China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its 22nd session from April 27 to 30, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, April 20. 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 2026 work priorities as well as 2026 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.

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NPC Calendar: April 2026

The 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene for its 22nd session in late April. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet in mid-April to decide on the agenda and the dates of the session.

The Council is also expected to approve the NPCSC’s 2026 work priorities as well as plans for legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work. These documents will be released after the upcoming NPCSC session (likely in early May).

The session is expected to review the recently submitted draft revision to the Bid Invitation and Bidding Law [招标投标法] and draft revision to the Water Law [水法].

The session is also likely to review one or more of the following bills:

China Elevates Environmental Law to an Official Branch of Law

Photo by Pcess609 (stock.adobe.com)

On March 12, 2026, shortly after China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the Ecological and Environmental Code (Code) [生态环境法典], the legislature separately announced that it had also upgraded “ecological and environmental law” [生态环境法] to an official “branch of [Chinese] law” [法律部门], joining the existing seven, including civil and commercial law and criminal law.

The 9th NPC (1998–2003) was the first to divide Chinese law into official branches. In fall 1997, the Communist Party announced at its 15th Congress the goal of establishing “a socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics” [中国特色社会主义法律体系] by 2010. This task primarily fell to the national legislature, which decided that, to achieve that goal, it must (among other criteria) enact enough legislation to cover all branches of law, which in turn raised the question of how those branches should be defined.

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NPC 2026: Chinese Legislature Revokes Landmark 1985 Delegation of Economic Lawmaking Power to the State Council

Image by Nuthawut (stock.adobe.com)

As we previewed, on March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), approved a decision declaring that 35 instruments it adopted between 1982 and 2018 had lapsed, while confirming the continued validity of past actions taken under them.

The oldest among them, adopted together with China’s current Constitution on December 4, 1982, provided that certain provisions of the 1978 Constitution would continue to apply until the next NPC elected a new president, vice president, and NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), which took place in June 1983. The newest instrument, adopted on March 17, 2018, prescribed voting rules for the 2018 state leadership transition at the first session of the 13th NPC.

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NPC 2026: A First Look at China’s New Environmental Code

UPDATE (Mar. 12, 2026): We have updated this post in accordance with the Code’s final text. The original version is archived here.

Editor’s Note: This post is a collaboration between NPC Observer and a group of Chinese environmental law scholars led by Feng Ge, currently a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of NYU School of Law. The other members are Jiaying Deng, Xinyu Jia, Jingxian Zhang, and Gaachi Liang. This post was written by Changhao Wei and draws on materials prepared by those scholars.

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province. Photo by aphotostory (stock.adobe.com).

On March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the Ecological and Environmental Code (Code) [生态环境法典] to partially codify, with updates, China’s existing environmental laws and regulations. It is China’s second formal legal code, after the 2020 Civil Code [民法典]. The Communist Party views the latter’s enactment as a success. In 2021, Xi Jinping praised it as a “model” for codification and called for codifying other areas of law where “conditions are ripe.”

In fall 2023, the Code was chosen as the next codification project, likely due to its strong political and legal foundations. Environmental protection has been a top priority for the Party under Xi Jinping, whose “Thought on Ecological Civilization” was coined in 2018 as a component of his overarching political thought. China’s environmental law is also fairly well developed. Today, the country boasts over 30 environmental statutes, more than 100 State Council–issued administrative regulations, and many more ministerial rules and policy documents.

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NPC 2026: China Enshrines Xi-Era Ethnic Policy in New Law

UPDATE (Mar. 12, 2026): We updated this post in accordance with the Law’s final text. The original version is archived here.

1957 propaganda poster depicting representatives of different ethnic minorities participating in a National Day parade on Tiananmen Square. The caption reads, “Long Live the Great Unity of Chinese People of All Ethnic Groups.” Original poster by Yang Junsheng. Photo via chineseposters.net. 🅮 Public domain.

On March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) adopted the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress (Law) [民族团结进步促进法]—designed to codify General Secretary Xi Jinping’s new orthodoxy for governing China’s ethnic minorities. That doctrine, known as the “Important Thinking on Improving and Strengthening Ethnic Work,” reflects the “Second-Generation Ethnic Policies” promoted by several prominent scholars. In a nutshell, this new “assimilationist” approach aims “not just to strengthen citizens’ sense of belonging to a larger, unified Chinese nation under the Party but also to mute expression of other—in the Party’s view, competing—identities.”

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