Category: Legal Inquiry Responses

Legal Inquiry Response: Defining “Central Authorities” in Hong Kong’s Article 23 Legislation

On Friday, March 8, 2024, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) unveiled a controversial Safeguarding National Security Bill (Bill) to discharge the city’s duty under Article 23 of its Basic Law to enact national security legislation and to supplement the Hong Kong National Security Law (HKNSL) that was imposed on the city in 2020. The government’s sprawling proposals would create an array of broadly worded offenses, including treason, insurrection, crimes relating to state secrets, and “external interference,” and generally limit the due process rights of those accused of national security offenses (whether under the Bill, the HKNSL, or any other law).

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2022 Legal Inquiry Response: Localities Lack Legislative Authority over Personal Bankruptcy—Except Shenzhen?

On January 28, 2023, the Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) of the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) released one of the “legal inquiry responses” [法律询问答复] it had issued during the past year. As discussed in depth here, such responses clarify the applicable law in real-world scenarios at the request of central governmental bodies or provincial legislatures. They are not universally binding, but are considered highly persuasive—hence a form of “soft law”—because of the LAC’s pivotal role in lawmaking.

The sole response released on Saturday concerns the division of legislative powers between central and local authorities. In May 2022, an unnamed provincial legislature1 wrote to the LAC that the minors protection legislation it was reviewing would touch on (1) guardianship of minors, and that it was also mulling legislation on (2) intellectual property protections for porcelain and (3) personal bankruptcy. May it legislate on those matters, it asked, or are they within the national legislature’s exclusive purview?

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2021 Legal Inquiry Responses: Enforcing New Ban on Entertainment Venues Near Kindergartens & Municipal Legislative Authority to Support the Private Sector

Photo by Naomi Shi from Pexels

On July 11, 2022, the NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission (Commission) released two of its “legal inquiry responses” [法律询问答复] issued during the past year. As we have discussed in depth in this post, such responses clarify the applicable law in real-world scenarios at the request of central governmental bodies or provincial legislatures. They are not universally binding, but are considered highly persuasive—hence a form of “soft law”—because of the Commission’s pivotal role in lawmaking. The batch released on Monday is smaller than those released in previous years, but most likely only represents a minuscule portion of all legal inquiry responses the Commission issued in 2021. The two selected responses concern, respectively, the enforcement of a new statutory prohibition on entertainment venues near kindergartens and the extent of a municipal legislature’s authority to promote the private sector of the local economy. We explain them in turn below.

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2020 Legal Inquiry Responses: Marriage Age for Ethnic Minorities, Rescheduling Local People’s Congress Elections & More

Photo by Andy Wong (Associated Press), via NYT

On April 1, the NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission (Commission) made public six of its “responses to legal inquiries” [法律询问答复] from 2020. It last released a batch of such responses from 2018 and 2019 in September 2020, after a thirteen-year hiatus. As we wrote then, these responses to legal inquiries can be considered a form of “soft law”: they answer other governmental bodies’ requests to clarify the applicable law in real-world scenarios and can function like the NPC Standing Committee’s legislative interpretations. The inquiring governmental bodies tend to follow the responses, but they do not bind anyone else. Still, they are considered highly persuasive because of the Commission’s pivotal role in lawmaking. The responses released on Thursday touched on a few different subjects: postponing local legislative sessions due to Covid-19, governance of for-profit private schools, ethnic autonomous regions’ legislative authority, terms of supervision commissions, and rescheduling elections for local people’s congresses. We will summarize and explain these Q&As below.

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NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission Releases New Responses to Legal Inquiries

The NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission (Commission) is a professional support body that is indispensable to the lawmaking process. We have previously written a profile of the Commission. Among its many functions is the relatively obscure authority to respond to “legal inquiries concerning specific questions” [有关具体问题的法律询问] (Legislation Law [立法法] art. 64). Few of the Commission’s responses to such inquiries have been made public. It has issued thousands of them,1 but had made public only about 200 by 2007. It had altogether stopped the release since then—until September 2020. Late that month, the Commission quietly posted a new batch of responses to legal inquiries online after a thirteen-year hiatus. Below, we first offer a more in-depth look at the Commission’s legal inquiry responses, before turning to the newly released responses themselves.

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