Taige Hu

Taige Hu has been the deputy manager of NPC Observer since July 2019. He was a research assistant from August 2018 to June 2019. He is an LL.M. candidate at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. He obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from the City University of Hong Kong in 2021.

NPC 2023: Documents and Votes

The first session of China’s 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) concluded on Monday, March 13. Below we have compiled a list of all official documents from this session. Unless otherwise noted, all documents are available in Chinese only.

Where available, the vote results for each bill, resolution, and personnel matter are also listed below in brackets, in the order of yea – nay – abstention, followed by the number of delegates not voting (NV), if any. Some results are presented in a spreadsheet embedded at the bottom of this page. Thank you to Twitter user @MelanievonBraun for recording the votes received by each candidate for NPC Standing Committee member based on a livestream of the proceedings and for sharing the dataset with us.

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A Guide to China’s 2023 State Council Restructuring

UPDATE #2 (Mar. 23, 2023): Chinese authorities released the full Party and State Institutional Reform Plan on March 16, and the new State Council announced its organizational structure on March 20. We have accordingly updated our bilingual State Council organizational chart and this guide. Click here to jump to the update.

UPDATE #1 (Mar. 10, 2023): The NPC approved the State Council Institutional Reform Plan on March 10 and has released its full text, which is identical to the version discussed in this post.

On Tuesday, March 7, China unveiled details of its 2023 State Council Institutional Reform Plan (Plan) [国务院机构改革方案]. The National People’s Congress (NPC) is set to approve the Plan on March 9, ahead of its votes to appoint a new slate of State Council officials on March 10–11. This would be the ninth round of State Council reorganization since the Reform Era began. Previous rounds took place in 1982, 1988, and every five years thereafter.

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NPC 2023: Agenda and Daily Schedule

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) has released its 2023 session’s agenda and daily schedule of meetings. This year’s session will open on the morning of March 5 and close on the morning of March 13. Lasting only eight and a half days, it is the shortest inaugural session of an NPC in at least forty years. NPC sessions in the last three years were each shortened to seven days (from typically ten) due to Covid-control measures. This year’s session is the first one held since the zero-Covid policy ended last December, but it appears the compressed meeting schedule is here to stay. All times below are in China Standard Time (UTC +8:00). For a primer on the NPC and its annual sessions, check out this FAQ.

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NPC 2023: Amendments to China’s “Statutory Constitution” of Lawmaking

Editor’s Note (Mar. 16, 2023): We have updated this post in accordance with the final text of the amendments adopted on March 13. The original version of this post is archived here.

For the ninth year in a row, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) considered and adopted legislation at its annual session earlier this month. This year’s bill was amendments to the Legislation Law [立法法] (Bill), previously reviewed in October and December 2022. The Legislation Law is an important statute with semi-constitutional status. It serves three principal purposes: it demarcates the legislative authority of various state institutions; regulates (to varying extent) their legislative procedures; and prescribes a hierarchy of legal norms, along with the attendant mechanism to enforce that hierarchy, called “recording and review” [备案审查].

The Bill has made an array of amendments to provisions in all three areas. In this post, we will offer a relatively thorough discussion of the Bill, proceeding in the order of legislative authority, procedure, and hierarchy. In each section below, we will discuss more important amendments in the order they appear in the Bill, and briefly summarize minor ones at the end of the section. We will not mention amendments that simply repeat the provisions of other laws. All in-line citations are to the Legislation Law as amended by the Bill.

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Year in Review: The NPC and the Observer in 2022

As we bid farewell to 2022, we look back at the National People’s Congress’s and our work in the past year.

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Explainer: NPCSC’s Interpretation of Hong Kong National Security Law over Jimmy Lai’s Foreign Defense Counsel

On December 30, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), issued its inaugural interpretation (Interpretation) of the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR (HKNSL) [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法]. We have recently explained the events leading up to the Interpretation in detail here. In sum: Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, is facing criminal charges under Hong Kong’s local sedition law and the HKNSL. He decided to retain Timothy Owen, a renowned British barrister, for his defense. Owen is not admitted to the Hong Kong bar, but the trial court allowed him to represent Lai on an ad hoc basis. After having failed to have the trial court’s decision reversed on appeal, the Hong Kong government turned to the NPCSC, which has the ultimate authority to interpret the HKNSL.

John Lee, Hong Kong’s leader, requested the NPCSC to answer this open-ended question: “Based on the legislative intent and objectives of the [HKNSL], can an overseas solicitor or barrister who is not qualified to practise generally in Hong Kong participate by any means in the handling of work in cases concerning offence endangering national security?” His request, notably, did not identify any specific HKNSL provision that needs clarification.

Contrary to what many had expected, the NPCSC exercised restraint in responding to Lee’s request. It did not directly ban foreign lawyers from participating in national security cases; in fact, it altogether punted on the question presented. The Interpretation instead clarifies that the HKNSL has already given the Hong Kong government adequate tools to resolve the issue. The ball is now back in the latter’s court.

Below, we explain Friday’s Interpretation and offer some preliminary thoughts on its implications in Q&A format.

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comment on 13 Bills: Foreign Sovereign Immunity, Foreign Relations, Counterespionage, Lawmaking Reform, Charity Regulation, Financial Stability, Foreign-Related Litigation & More

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following 13 bills through January 28, 2023:

Draft NameChinese TextExplanatory Document
Legislation Law (2nd Draft Amendment)
立法法修正草案二次审议稿		PDF · Δ
(English Δ)		PDF
Company Law (2nd Draft Revision)
公司法修订草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Counterespionage Law (2nd Draft Revision)
反间谍法修订草案二次审议稿		PDF · Δ
($ English)		PDF
Qinghai–Tibet Plateau Ecological Conservation Law (2nd Draft)
青藏高原生态保护法草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Marine Environmental Protection Law (Draft Revision)
海洋环境保护法修订草案		PDFPDF
Rural Collective Economic Organizations Law (Draft)
农村集体经济组织法草案		PDFPDF
Charity Law (Draft Revision)
慈善法修订草案		PDF · Δ
($ English)		PDF
Value-Added Tax Law (Draft)
增值税法草案		PDF ΔPDF
Financial Stability Law (Draft)
金融稳定法草案		PDFPDF
Foreign Sovereign Immunity Law (Draft)
外国国家豁免法草案		PDF
($ English)		PDF
Civil Procedure Law (Draft Amendment)
民事诉讼法修正草案		PDF · ΔPDF
Administrative Litigation Law (Draft Amendment)
行政诉讼法修正草案		PDF · ΔPDF
Foreign Relations Law (Draft)
对外关系法草案		PDFPDF

English translations will be provided if and when 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 only if you are using a desktop browser (this does not work on a phone or a tablet).

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“Sweep Away Darkness, Eliminate Evil”: A Belated Overview of China’s First Organized Crime Law

Image by joko sutrisno on Vecteezy

In December 2021, the NPC Standing Committee adopted the Anti–Organized Crime Law (AOCL or Law) [反有组织犯罪法], China’s first statute dedicated to combatting organized crime. The Law has taken effect on May 1, 2022. It came at a time when the Communist Party’s three-year campaign to “clear out the underworld” (or saohei, short for “扫黑除恶,” literally “sweep away darkness and eliminate evil”) that began in 2018 was wrapping up and when central authorities were calling for the “normalization” of the saohei campaign.

China previously launched two similarly named special actions in the 2000s to “crack down on the underworld,” or dahei (short for “打黑除恶”). The difference in one character, however, gave the latest saohei campaign a broader scope. Rather than fight organize crime in a whack-a-mole fashion primarily to ensure public safety, saohei is “inherently political”: it is expressly aimed at solidifying the Party’s rule down to the lowest levels of governance. To that end, China’s national criminal justice authorities issued a series of guidance documents to broadly define “organized crime” and related concepts, call for whole-of-society efforts to prevent organized crime, set forth special criminal procedures and powers, and penalize corrupt officials who enable such criminal activities.

The AOCL is a key tool to “normalize” the saohei campaign. It was enacted in part to “safeguard national security, social order, and economic order,” and incorporated many of the measures contained in the guidance documents. As saohei will remain part of the Party’s social governance program for at least the next five years, below we take a belated look at the AOCL.

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Explainer: Hong Kong Government’s Request for NPCSC Interpretation of National Security Law in Jimmy Lai Case

Editor’s Note (Dec. 30, 2022): The NPCSC on Friday, December 30 issued an interpretation of articles 14 and 47 of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Our explainer is available here.

Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and media tycoon, has been indicted on four national security charges and was scheduled to stand trial on Thursday. (The government has asked the court to postpone the trial in light of the development discussed below.) He is being accused of violating Hong Kong’s seditious publications law and of conspiring to “collude with a foreign country or external elements to endanger national security” under the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR (NSL) [香港特别行政区维护国家安全法].

Recently, Lai retained Timothy Owen, an experienced British barrister, to lead his defense team. Owen, as one Hong Kong court recognized, is a “renowned specialist in criminal, public and human rights law, with substantial experience in cases concerning national security and freedom of speech.” He has appeared before Hong Kong courts in the past but is not admitted to the Hong Kong bar. Over the Hong Kong government’s objection, the Court of First Instance allowed Owen to represent Lai on an ad hoc basis. After having suffered a streak of losses on appeal, the government on Monday decided to seek help from the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), which has the ultimate authority to interpret the NSL. Below, we will discuss the legal battle fought in Hong Kong courts, the government’s request for NPCSC intervention, and what to expect next.

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comments on Bills on Lawmaking Reforms, Accessibility, Administrative Reconsideration & Military Reservists

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on the following four bills through November 29, 2022:

Draft NameChinese TextExplanatory Document
Legislation Law (Draft Amendment)
立法法修正草案		PDF Δ
(English)		PDF
Barrier-Free Environments Development Law (Draft)
无障碍环境建设法草案		PDFPDF
Administrative Reconsideration Law (Draft Revision)
行政复议法修订草案		PDF ΔPDF
Reservists Law (Draft)
预备役人员法草案		PDFPDF

English translations will be provided if and when available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese.

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:

北京市西城区前门西大街1号 邮编: 100805
No. 1 West Qianmen Avenue, Xicheng District, Beijing 100805

Please clearly write “<Draft Name in Chinese>征求意见” on the envelope.

Update (Oct. 31, 2022): A prior version of this post noted that the NPCSC’s online public consultation system was requiring users to provide a name. That requirement no longer exists.