The Council of Chairpersons decided on Thursday, October 13 to convene the 37th session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) from October 26 to 30, shortly after the Communist Party’s upcoming 20th National Congress (to open on October 16) closes. Seven bills are on the tentative agenda, which we preview below.
Continue reading “NPCSC Session Watch: Women’s Rights, Accessibility, Administrative & Lawmaking Reforms, Military Reservists & More”UPDATE (Nov. 8, 2022): We have posted a full English translation of Prof. Liang’s request for review.
Maternity insurance [生育保险] is one of the five programs that make up China’s social insurance system. Funded by employer contributions, maternity insurance reimburses women for pregnancy- and childbirth-related medical expenses and offers them a source of income during maternity leave. In all provinces except Guangdong, however, single women have been ineligible for maternity insurance benefits. Local legislation requires claimants to provide their marriage license or some other government-issued document available only to married couples, in effect barring single women from obtaining the benefits. In a legal battle that spanned four years, Zou Xiaoqi, a single mother from Shanghai, repeatedly challenged the city’s discriminatory policy in court but ultimately to no avail. (In late 2020, Shanghai suddenly dropped the marriage requirement, but reversed course just a few months later.)
Continue reading “Recording & Review: Ensuring Single Women’s Equal Access to Maternity Insurance (Updated)”
Telecom and online fraud has grown rampant in China in the past decade. According to the Supreme People’s Court (SPC), scammers have defrauded victims of more than 35 billion RMB (~5 billion USD) in 2020 alone. In 2021, public security organs nationwide cracked over 394,000 cases of telecom and online fraud and arrested over 630,000 suspects. Meanwhile, the crime of aiding criminal activities on information networks (including telecom and online fraud) has become the third most-prosecuted crime in China, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) recently disclosed.
At the same time, fraudsters continue to upgrade their tactics and operations. They take advantage of new technologies to reach more potential victims and to evade prosecution. Relying on leaked or stolen sensitive personal information, they also target susceptible victims with precision by impersonating police officers and other government officials or by exploiting the victim’s personal circumstances. As domestic crackdown intensifies, many scammers have moved their operations overseas to regions such as northern Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. According to the SPC, as of mid-2021, more than 60% of telecom- and online-fraud cases now originate from overseas “hotspots.”
Since 2020, national criminal justice authorities, telecom regulator, and the central bank have launched multiple joint operations to crack down on the illegal trade in SIM cards as well as bank cards and other payment accounts. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has also worked with immigration authorities to break up rings that smuggle people overseas to become scammers. In addition, the SPC, SPP, and MPS have released two joint opinions to clarify the application of related crimes and criminal procedural rules in telecom- and online-fraud cases.
The new Law Against Telecom and Online Fraud [反电信网络诈骗法], adopted by the NPC Standing Committee on September 2, is the latest official action to tackle such crimes. It supplements criminal statutes by prescribing administrative punishments for those who organize or otherwise directly participate in less serious cases of telecom and online fraud (art. 38, para. 2). The bulk of its provisions, however, focus on preventing such fraud from occurring in the first place. Below we take a close look at this new law.
Continue reading “Legislation Summary: China’s New Law to Fight Telecom and Internet Fraud”
The 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its 35th session on Friday, June 24, with the approval of four bills: amendments to the Anti-Monopoly Law [反垄断法] and the NPCSC Rules of Procedure [全国人民代表大会常务委员会议事规则], a revised Sports Law [体育法], and a new Black Soil Protection Law [黑土地保护法]. Below, we will first briefly discuss the Anti-Monopoly Law amendment before focusing on the new Sports Law and Black Soil Protection Law. We will leave the NPCSC’s updated procedural rules for a separate post.
Continue reading “NPCSC Amends Anti-Monopoly Law, Revises Sports Law & Adopts New Law to Protect Black Soil”
The National People’s Congress (NPC) has released its 2022 Session’s agenda and daily schedule of meetings. The Session will open on the morning of Saturday, March 5 and close on the morning of Friday, March 11, lasting a total of six and a half days. All times below are in China Standard Time (UTC +8:00). If you are new to the NPC and its annual sessions, remember to check out this FAQ.
Continue reading “2022 NPC Session: Agenda & Daily Schedule”
The 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its 33rd session on Monday, February 28 adopted two short decisions that, respectively, established a Chengdu-Chongqing Financial Court and codified a system of ranks for the active-duty soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Below we translated the decisions and offered some brief explanations.
Continue reading “Translations: New Legislation on Chengdu-Chongqing Financial Court & Military Ranks for PLA Soldiers”
The Council of Chairpersons decided on Friday, February 18 to convene the 33rd session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) from February 27 to 28. The main purpose of this two-day meeting is to prepare for the upcoming NPC session, which is scheduled to open on March 5. The meeting will, for instance, propose an agenda for the NPC session and discuss the NPCSC’s annual work report to the NPC. The meeting will therefore review only two simple bills and one report. A brief rundown follows.
Continue reading “NPCSC Session Watch: NPC Preparations, Military Ranks, Chengdu-Chongqing Financial Court & Report on SPC Intellectual Property Tribunal”As we bid farewell to 2021, we look back at the National People’s Congress’s and our work in the past year.
Continue reading “Year in Review: The NPC and the Observer in 2021”
Last Friday, December 24, the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) concluded its 32nd session and adopted eight bills. To give the new Anti–Organized Crime Law [反有组织犯罪法] the attention it deserves and to limit the length of this post, we will publish a separate summary of that Law, likely in January [It was published in December 2022. —Ed.]. The other seven bills are discussed below.
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.
Continue reading “NPCSC Session Watch: Women’s Rights, Trade Unions, Yellow River & Black Soil Protection, Emergency Management Reform & More (Updated)”