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.
A slogan reading “Speak Putonghua, Write Standard Characters” in a Guangzhou secondary school. Photo by Gzdavidwong (Wikimedia Commons). CC BY-SA 3.0.
China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its seventeenth session from September 8 to 12, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Tuesday, August 26. According to the Council’s proposed agenda, the session will consider 16 legislative bills—the most so far during this five-year term—and hear 8 oversight reports, among other business. As usual, we preview the session’s legislative agenda in detail below.
This post is the second and final part of our coverage of China’s revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law (PSAPL) [治安管理处罚法], approved by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) on June 27 and set to go into effect on New Year’s Day. As introduced in Part 1 in more detail, the PSAPL authorizes the police to punish what are deemed minor offenses against the public order through administrative processes outside the criminal justice system. Part 1 focuses on several broader issues that arose during the revision process: the use of administrative detention, the availability of detention hearings, and the vagueness of certain offenses. This part will more comprehensively survey the changes in the revision, though it is still not intended to be exhaustive.
The PSAPL can be roughly divided into three parts: general rules on liability and punishment; offenses and penalties; and procedures for investigating and penalizing public security violations. This post will proceed in the same order. We will draw on Jeremy Daum’s overview of the revision’s first draft as well as a recent explainer by the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC).1 For additional information on the revised PSAPL, please see this English translation by China Law Translate or this Chinese-language comparison chart we have prepared. Inline page citations are to the LAC article, while inline statutory references are to the revised PSAPL unless context indicates otherwise.
Chinese traffic police officer stands on duty on the street in Beijing. Photo by Phuong (stock.adobe.com).
On June 27, 2025, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), approved an overhaul of the 2005 Public Security Administration Punishments Law (PSAPL) [治安管理处罚法], bringing a 12-year legislative marathon to a close. The revised PSAPL will enter into force on January 1, 2026.
The PSAPL sits at the intersection of Chinese criminal law and administrative law. On the one hand, it is a penal statute that defines “violations of public security administration”: relatively minor public order offenses that generally correspond to more serious “crimes” in the Criminal Law [刑法]. These violations are punishable with warnings, fines, license revocations, and even detention of up to 15 days (or up to 20 days for multiple offenses). The PSAPL also lays down the procedures for investigating and punishing the violations, so it is like the Criminal Law and the Criminal Procedure Law [刑事诉讼法] rolled into one. On the other hand, the PSAPL skirts the normal criminal justice process, authorizing the police to penalize public security violations by themselves through nominally administrative proceedings. It incorporates most of the procedures under the Administrative Punishments Law [行政处罚法] and the Administrative Coercion Law [行政强制法]—which regulate, respectively, administrative punishments (e.g., fines and detention) and coercive administrative measures (e.g., investigative restraints on physical liberty and property seizures)—while adapting them to the public security context.
As the first meaningful update of the PSAPL in 20 years, the revision has introduced too many changes to recount individually. To summarize, it has tweaked the general rules of liability and punishments; added around 30 new offenses to the original 152 and modified about 20 others; increased fines across the board; and refined investigatory and decisionmaking procedures.
We will cover the revision in two parts. In this first part, we will delve into a few major changes (or sets of changes), drawing on a recent explainer by Zhang Yijian, a division head in the Office for Criminal Law within the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC).1 Though necessarily biased and self-congratulatory—the article portrays a legislature that tempered the more aggressive draft prepared by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS)—it explains in detail why certain changes were or weren’t made, offers glimpses of behind-the-scenes debates, and candidly acknowledges some flaws in the PSAPL regime. In the next part, we will take a more comprehensive look at the changes but without detailed analysis.
The 14th NPC Standing Committee will convene for its seventeenth session in late August. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet in mid-August to decide on the agenda and dates of the session.
UPDATE (June 27, 2025): On June 27, the NPCSC approved revisions to the Public Security Administration Punishments Law (effective Jan. 1, 2026) and to the Anti–Unfair Competition Law (effective Oct. 15, 2025). It also removed Miao Hua as a member of the PRC Central Military Commission and ratified the Convention on the Establishment of the International Organization for Mediation, among the other actions taken.
China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its sixteenth session from June 24 to 27, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, June 16. According to the Council’s proposed agenda, the session will consider twelve legislative bills, hear three oversight reports, and ratify the Convention on the Establishment of the International Organization for Mediation—which China signed on May 30 as a founding member. As usual, we preview the session’s legislative agenda in detail below.
Caption and opening lines of the NPCSC’s 2025 oversight plan.
A few weeks ago, on May 14, 2025, China’s national legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), released its 2025 oversight plan. Today, after an eight-year hiatus, we are resuming coverage of this annual document on this site. We begin with some background before delving into the 2025 plan itself.
The full NPCSC conducts oversight primarily by reviewing reports, either submitted by the state organs subject to its oversight or produced by its subordinate bodies. Every year since 2010, it has also held two or three “special inquiries” [专题询问]—essentially Q&A sessions where lawmakers question officials on specific issues—to supplement its review of selected reports. These inquiries, as well as the follow-up oversight measures available to the NPCSC after it hears a report, are discussed here.
Here is our recap of NPC-related events in June 2025 at our newsletter.
The Preschool Education Law [学前教育法] (adopted on Nov. 8, 2024) and the amendment to the Supervision Law [监察法] (adopted on Dec. 25, 2024) take effect on June 1.
The 14th NPCSC will convene for its sixteenth 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.
In addition, the session is expected to review the newly submitted Healthcare Security Law [医疗保障法] and amendment to the Food Safety Law [食品安全法], and may also take up one or more of the other bills scheduled for an initial review this year by the NPCSC’s 2025 legislative work plan.
On Wednesday, May 14, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), released its legislative work plan for 2025 (Plan). The Plan was preliminarily approved by the Council of Chairpersons in December 2024 and finalized on April 18. It sets forth priorities for all aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work in 2025, which include a list of legislative projects slated for review or research this year. Other aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work include conducting constitutional review of draft laws, improving legislative procedure, raising public awareness of the NPC’s legislative activities, and offering guidance to local people’s congresses. As usual, we will focus on the list of legislative projects in this post.
Here is our recap of NPC-related events in May 2025 at our monthly newsletter.
The Rural Collective Economic Organizations Law [农村集体经济组织法] (adopted on June 28, 2024) and the decision of the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) authorizing the State Council to temporarily modify a provision of the Seed Law [种子法] in the Xinjiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (adopted on Apr. 30, 2025) take effect on May 1.
The NPCSC is expected to release its 2025 work priorities as well as 2025 plans for legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work sometime this month.
It will convene for its next regularly scheduled session in late June.
Read our commentary for The Diplomat on the recent controversy in China over a statutory requirement to seal the records of public security violations—and what it says about public engagement by the NPC.
