Covering China’s National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee
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.
From 1980 to 2021, China imposed some form of enforceable birth quota on most of its population. A one-child policy had been implemented until late 2013, when it was partially relaxed so that couples may have two children if one parent was an only child. Then in 2016, the modified one-child policy was replaced by a two-child policy, which was in turn superseded by a three-child policy in May 2021. Although a formal birth quota remains after the latest policy change, a statutory amendment in August eliminated all the penalties that once attached to violations of the quota, such as hefty fines and terminations of employment. In effect, couples who exceed the three-child limit will not be penalized, though they will be ineligible for benefits such as extended maternity leave.
Two months ago, on October 13–14, the Communist Party held the first-ever “Central Conference on Work Related to the People’s Congresses” [中央人大工作会议]. In the lead-up to the Conference and in the months since, the concept of “whole-process people’s democracy” [全过程人民民主] has permeated official discourse and was recently further expounded on in a government white paper titled China: Democracy That Works (the Chinese title, “中国的民主” (China’s Democracy), is blander). That concept requires further study and assessment, and the Conference could prove significant in additional ways, especially for the people’s congress system. We thus translated the readout of the Conference (via Xinhua) below, while we await, hopefully, the release of the full text of Xi Jinping’s speech at the Conference on which the readout is largely based.
UPDATE (Dec. 16, 2021): According to a spokesman for the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission, the NPCSC will additionally review a draft revision to the Company Law [公司法] and a draft amendment to the NPCSC Rules of Procedure [全国人民代表大会常务委员会议事规则] at its December 2021 session.
The Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, November 29 to convene the 32nd session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) from December 20 to 24. The session’s tentative agenda includes fourteen bills. A quick rundown follows.
Update (Dec. 1, 2021): Our preview of this month’s NPCSC session is available here.
The 13th NPC Standing Committee will convene for its 32nd session from December 20 to 24. According to a preliminary agenda, it will review the following bills:
The 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its 31st session on Saturday, October 23, with the approval of six bills. We already wrote about and translated the decision authorizing the State Council to carry out pilot projects on a property tax in selected regions. Below, we will briefly summarize the other five bills.
On Saturday, October 23, China took an important, albeit small, step toward enacting a nationwide “real estate tax” [房地产税], commonly called “property tax” (we will use these terms interchangeably below). The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) adopted a decision authorizing the State Council to carry out property tax pilots in selected, as yet unspecified, regions, for at least five years. Reflecting the ongoing intense debates within the party-state, the decision lacks essential details about the proposed new tax and the pilots, and instead grants the State Council broad authority to design them.
English translations will be provided if and when available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese. The symbol “Δ” means that a file includes a chart comparing the draft amendment or revision with the current law.
To submit comments online, please refer to this guide. Comments can also be mailed to the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission [全国人大常委会法制工作委员会] at the following address:
Today is NPC Observer’s fifth birthday. I formally launched the website in my Los Angeles apartment on October 18, 2016. From the very start, it has been my goal to make China’s national legislature more accessible to English readers around the world and improve their understanding of that important institution. My first post went live at almost 11 p.m. that day, when the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) announced an upcoming eight-day session—still the longest one since. (That was the session when the NPCSC controversially interpreted the Hong Kong Basic Law’s oath-taking provision.) The website had just over 500 views by the end of November, and I was both surprised and thrilled. A year later, the first draft of the Supervision Law—I believe we were the first outlet anywhere to post it—drew almost 20,000 views in November 2017 alone.
Our small team—no bigger than three at any given time—is probably the only constant during the past five years. I ran the website myself for the first fourteen months, including my first semester in law school. Over the years, a few people joined the team, made invaluable contributions, and moved on to greater things. Taige Hu, our capable deputy manager, has been with us for over three years and counting. I can’t speak for others, but it is a genuine passion for what we do, a sense of obligation to our growing readership, and of course lots of caffeine—that have kept me going.
In the interim, almost everything else at NPC Observer has changed. We revamped the website’s appearance in late 2018, adopting a livelier header image, new colors, and better fonts for reading. We have also added many new features and functionalities, including some “under the hood” technical upgrades aimed at improving reader experience. In my mind we are no longer just a “blog,” a simple reverse-chronological feed of posts, even though the homepage layout remains the same.
At the same time, more significant changes and events happened at the NPC, many unimaginable five years ago. A new NPC convened in March 2018 and within days voted to approve a historic constitutional amendment. The NPCSC has subtly strengthened oversight of other governmental bodies, including through the invigoration of a mechanism for policing their rogue legislation. The legislature has also increased the volume and pace of legislation, enacting a raft of important laws that attracted global attention, including a series of controversial legislative actions over Hong Kong.
I am immensely grateful for my present and past teammates for helping build NPC Observer into a trusted source on the NPC in less than five years. Our success also owes a great deal to the countless people who read, support, and promote the website, many since the very beginning.
Last week, the Communist Party held its first-ever conference focusing on the people’s congresses. A historic moment for the NPC could be on the horizon, and we are prepared to continue doing our part in covering that increasingly important institution.
Thanks again, Changhao (in my capacity as the founder of NPC Observer)
P.S. We also posted new “About” pages for the website and the NPC. I hope you will check them out.
draft decision authorizing the State Council to suspend certain provisions of the Metrology Law [计量法] in six cities; and
draft decision authorizing the State Council and the Central Military Commission to suspend certain statutory provisions during the reform of the national defense mobilization system.
