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 2026: China Enacts Law on the Formulation and Implementation of Five-Year Plans

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

1956 propaganda poster featuring a Chinese typist and the caption “All labor contributes indispensably to the fulfillment of the [First] Five-Year Plan and is glorious work!” Original poster by Zhou Daowu. Photo via The Mao Era in Objects. 🅮 Public domain.

On March 12, 2026, China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), approved the 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP), a roadmap for the nation’s socioeconomic development through 2030. Alongside it, the NPC also adopted the Law on National Development Plans (Law) [国家发展规划法]—the first statute to formalize the procedures for drafting, approving, and implementing FYPs.

Developed over seven decades, the planning process now operates under a mix of written authorities and long-standing customs. In 2018, the Communist Party and the State Council issued a joint opinion imposing a range of procedural and substantive requirements for drafting and implementing FYPs. In 2021, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) overhauled its Decision on Strengthening the Oversight of Economic Work (Oversight Decision) [关于加强经济工作监督的决定]—which governs, among other things, legislative oversight of the planning process. Meanwhile, other features of the process, such as the Party’s quinquennial recommendations for formulating the next FYP, continue as a matter of practice.

The Law codifies that existing regime and regulates the entire lifecycle of an FYP: from drafting (Ch. II) to legislative review and approval (Ch. III), to implementation (Ch. IV) and related oversight activities (Ch. V). Most notably, the Law spells out the Party’s role throughout the planning process. While, unsurprisingly, it contains the now-standard language that national development planning must uphold the Party’s leadership (arts. 3, 5), the Law is the first Chinese statute to assign detailed roles to Party documents and institutions.

UPDATE (Mar. 3, 2026): In a new essay for the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, we further elaborated and commented on the Law’s Party provisions.

Continue reading “NPC 2026: China Enacts Law on the Formulation and Implementation of Five-Year Plans” →

NPCSC Session Watch: Social Assistance, Fire and Rescue Personnel, CPAs & NPC Preparations

A Beijing China Fire and Rescue vehicle with a special license plate. Photo by tommao wang (Unsplash).

China’s national legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will meet for its twenty-first session, its second meeting this month, from February 25 to 26, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Tuesday, February 10.

A key task of this two-day meeting is to prepare for the NPC’s 2026 plenary session, scheduled to open to March 5. Among other documents, the NPCSC will discuss its annual work report and propose an itemized agenda for the NPC session.

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NPC Standing Committee to Convene Emergency Session Ostensibly to Confirm NPC Membership Changes

UPDATE (Feb. 4, 2025): After the brief emergency session, the NPCSC announced the removals of three NPC delegates who had all worked in the defense industry: Zhou Xinmin [周新民], former chairman of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China; Luo Qi [罗琦], former chief engineer of the China National Nuclear Corporation; and Liu Cangli [刘仓理], former director of the China Academy of Engineering Physics. Luo and Liu also lost their seats on the NPCSC as a result. No other business was conducted at the emergency session. The Credentials Committee’s report has not been released, so it is not yet clear when and why they were dismissed by their electoral units. For more information about those men and the ongoing anti-corruption campaign against the military and defense sector, see this report by the South China Morning Post. It is still unclear why the emergency session was necessary. The likeliest explanation is that they are facing imminent detention or criminal charges, so must be stripped of their privileges posthaste.

Image by Memed ÖZASLAN (stock.abobe.com)

On Monday, February 2, the leaders of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), China’s national legislature, decided to convene the NPCSC for a one-day emergency session on Wednesday, February 4—weeks before its expected regular session later this month. This will be the second emergency session of the 14th NPCSC, following its July 2023 meeting to replace Qin Gang as China’s foreign minister.

According to the official readout of the legislative leaders’ meeting, the sole (disclosed) agenda item is a report by the NPCSC Delegate Credentials Committee “on the qualifications of certain delegates”—that is, on who has recently been elected to or removed from the National People’s Congress (NPC). The NPCSC is expected to approve the report and issue a corresponding public notice announcing the changes.

Continue reading “NPC Standing Committee to Convene Emergency Session Ostensibly to Confirm NPC Membership Changes” →

NPC Calendar: February 2026

UPDATE (Feb. 2, 2026): The NPCSC announced on February 2 that it will hold its 20th session on an emergency basis on February 4.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is seeking public comment on a draft revision to the Trademark Law [商标法] through February 9.

The 14th NPCSC will convene for its 21st session in late February. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet before the Lunar New Year holiday (which starts on February 15) to decide on the agenda and the dates of the session.

The NPCSC will primarily make preparations for the 2026 NPC session at its upcoming meeting, but may still review one or two of these bills:

China Amends Common Language Law to Expand Mandarin Use

Entrance to Ihlas Supermarket in Kashgar, Xinjiang on August 19, 2018. The top red banner says, in Chinese and Uyghur, “Communication starts with Putonghua.” The photographer pointed out that “the Chinese term ‘Putonghua’ [was] translated into Uyghur literally as ‘the common language.’” They also noted that the whiteboard seen above the handrail had a bilingual list of hospital-related terms titled “Learn the National Language: One Sentence a Day.” Check out the original photo for details. Photo by Kubilayaxun (Wikimedia Commons). CC BY-SA 4.0.

On December 27, 2025, China’s national legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), approved revisions to the 2000 Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (Standard Language Law or Law) [国家通用语言文字法]—a statute that defines China’s “national common language” and mandates its use across a variety of settings.

The Law’s first overhaul came after the Communist Party under Xi Jinping had elevated “forging a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation” [铸牢中华民族共同体意识] to “the main task for [its] ethnic work and all other initiatives in areas with large ethnic minority populations.” The task’s success hinges on cultivating a “deep” fivefold identification—with the motherland, the Chinese nation, the Chinese culture, the Party, and socialism with Chinese characteristics—among all ethnicities. And the key to such identification is a common language, Xi argues, calling for “comprehensive efforts to popularize the standard spoken and written Chinese language and the use of unified state-compiled textbooks, so as to facilitate shared psyche and future through communication.”

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NPC’s Budgetary Oversight Body Issues First Report on Review of Budgets and Fiscal Policy Measures

100 RMB banknotes
Photo by diy13 (stock.adobe.com)

On December 22, 2025, China’s national legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), heard the first-ever report on the “recording and review of fiscal and budgetary matters” [财政预算事项备案审查] from its Budgetary Affairs Commission (BAC) [预算工作委员会], a ministerial-level professional body that supports legislative oversight over public finances, including budgets, state-owned assets, and government debt.

Regular readers may be more familiar with “recording and review” (R&R) [备案审查] as the NPCSC’s mechanism for overseeing the legislative rules issued by major central and local state institutions—or the “legislative R&R” process. But the legislature also receives numerous other filings, many of which concern budgetary matters and tax policy. Under the Budget Law [预算法], the State Council must annually file consolidated local budgets and final accounts with the NPCSC and submit specific rules governing the central government’s transfer payments to localities (see arts. 23, 29). Other statutory authorities impose filing obligations as well. For example, while all tax statutes authorize the State Council to adopt tax incentives, they also require it to file those incentives with the NPCSC.

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Year in Review: The NPC and This Observer in 2025

As we bid farewell to 2025, we reflect on the work of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and of this publication over the past year.

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NPC Calendar: January 2026

The following laws take effect on January 1:

The Atomic Energy Law [原子能法] (adopted on Sept. 12, 2025) takes effect on January 15.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is seeking public comment on the following bills through January 25:

It is also seeking public comment on a draft revision to the Trademark Law [商标法] through February 9.

The NPCSC will meet for its next regularly scheduled session in late February.

NPC (Finally) Responds to Controversy over Sealing Drug-Use Records

Photo by Colin Davis (Unsplash)

It has been a month since the revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law (PSPAL) [治安管理处罚法] returned to the spotlight—this time because of Article 136, a new provision that generally requires the police to seal the records of all PSAPL violations.1 We explained and commented on the controversy in this piece for The Diplomat (summarized for our newsletter here). Here is the gist: Several official social-media accounts, in promoting the law ahead of its taking effect on New Year’s Day, focused public attention on Article 136’s application to drug offenses specifically. Netizens criticized both the substance of the record-sealing requirement—worried that it signals a softened official stance on drugs—and the process whereby the provision was adopted.

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NPCSC Session Watch: Environmental Code, Antarctic Policy, Ethnicity & Language, State Assets, Childcare, Banking Regulation & Trademarks

UPDATE (Dec. 22, 2025): The NPCSC has revealed that it will indeed submit the first three bills discussed below to the 2026 NPC session for approval and will pass the draft revisions to the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language and to the Foreign Trade Law on December 27.

Photo by Asya M (stock.adobe.com)

China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its nineteenth session, its final meeting of the year, from December 22 to 27, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, December 15. It will be the longest legislative session—lasting six days—since December 2019, with a suitably packed agenda. The NPCSC will review 14 legislative bills and hear almost two dozen reports, in addition to other business. As usual, we preview the session’s legislative agenda in detail below, while highlighting a few notable reports.

Continue reading “NPCSC Session Watch: Environmental Code, Antarctic Policy, Ethnicity & Language, State Assets, Childcare, Banking Regulation & Trademarks” →