After a decade of development, the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature, launched the National Database of Laws and Regulations (Database) [国家法律法规数据库] on February 24, 2021. Initially approved for development in 2011, the Database was deployed for testing in November 2018. By January 202, all data had been uploaded, and the following month it was opened for trial use by select institutions. While recognizing its scale, ambition, and laudable goal, we nonetheless thought the Database’s initial version—which we will call “Phase I”—missed the mark. Due to glaring gaps in coverage and a broken search function, it was “good for reading the documents you are able to locate, but not much more,” we wrote.

Four and a half years later, the NPC quietly rolled out major upgrades to the Database on August 20, 2025. While this new version—or “Phase II”—has the same coverage (with a caveat, as we will note below), there have been significant improvements on all other fronts: it has a more modern look, upgraded core functionalities, and useful new features. In short, we believe Phase II will prove to be much more valuable for the average citizen, if not for legal professionals as well.

In this guide and review, we introduce the Database’s current collection, redesigned homepage, browsing and search experience, and individual document pages. Its WeChat Mini App has received similar upgrades, but we decided not to review it this time.

On July 18, the Communist Party’s 20^th Central Committee at its Third Plenum adopted the Decision on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese-Style Modernization (Decision)¹ [关于进一步全面深化改革 推进中国式现代化的决定], which was made public on Sunday, July 21. (Here is a bilingual version of the Decision in PDF and HTML.) The day after the Plenum, the Party Group of the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) met to study the Decision and other documents from the Plenum. The meeting hailed the Decision as a “programmatic document” [纲领性文件] for further reforms and called on the NPC apparatus to, consistent with the NPC’s functions and responsibilities, “take solid steps to advance the legislative, oversight, and other tasks and initiatives ordered by the Plenum.” Such tasks and initiatives fall into three slightly overlapping categories: (1) reforms of the NPC itself and local people’s congresses; (2) explicit legislative tasks for the NPC; and (3) other reforms that would require NPC action to implement. Although Xi Jinping has reportedly instructed that the Decision not include any “general reform measures, developmental measures, or reform measures that central authorities had already deployed and were being implemented,” that has not always been the case—at least for those NPC-related reforms. And finally, the Decision notably sets 2029, when the PRC celebrates its 80^th anniversary, as the deadline for completing its myriad reform tasks. Below we take a brief look at each of the three categories of NPC-related reforms by excerpting from the Decision and supplementing with our commentaries.