Category: Translations

Translation: Five-Year Legislative Plan of China’s National People’s Congress for 2023–2028

On Thursday, September 7, 2023, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), released the five-year legislative plan for its current term ending in 2028. Since 1993, each NPCSC has adopted such a plan to outline and prioritize the legislative tasks during its five-year term. Those plans are important documents that require the approval of the Communist Party’s central leadership.

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Translations: New Legislation on Chengdu-Chongqing Financial Court & Military Ranks for PLA Soldiers

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.

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Translation: Readout of October 2021 Central Conference on Work Related to the People’s Congresses

Two months ago, on October 13–14, the Communist Party held the first-ever “Central Conference on Work Related to the People’s Congresses” [中央人大工作会议]. In the lead-up to the Conference and in the months since, the concept of “whole-process people’s democracy” [全过程人民民主] has permeated official discourse and was recently further expounded on in a government white paper titled China: Democracy That Works (the Chinese title, “中国的民主” (China’s Democracy), is blander). That concept requires further study and assessment, and the Conference could prove significant in additional ways, especially for the people’s congress system. We thus translated the readout of the Conference (via Xinhua) below, while we await, hopefully, the release of the full text of Xi Jinping’s speech at the Conference on which the readout is largely based.

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NPC Standing Committee Authorizes Property Tax Pilots (with Translation of the Authorization)

On Saturday, October 23, China took an important, albeit small, step toward enacting a nationwide “real estate tax” [房地产税], commonly called “property tax” (we will use these terms interchangeably below). The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) adopted a decision authorizing the State Council to carry out property tax pilots in selected, as yet unspecified, regions, for at least five years. Reflecting the ongoing intense debates within the party-state, the decision lacks essential details about the proposed new tax and the pilots, and instead grants the State Council broad authority to design them.

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Communist Party Releases New Set of NPC-Related Reform Goals in First Five-Year Plan on Building Rule of Law in China

On Sunday, January 10, 2021, the Communist Party releases China’s first Plan on Building the Rule of Law in China [法治中国建设规划], for the years 2020 to 2025. According to an unnamed Party official interviewed by Xinhua, the Plan was approved by two top Party institutions: the Central Commission for Overall Law-Based Governance and the Politburo Standing Committee. The Plan is a comprehensive document addressing all aspects of China’s legal reform. Not only does it restate and refine reform objectives laid down since the 18th Party Congress in 2012, it also includes new reform goals. Below, we will focus on four subsections of the Plan that set forth new reform goals relating to the NPC. We will translate the relevant parts of those subsections and supplement with our comments.

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Translation: NPCSC’s New Public Health Legislative Plan in Response to COVID-19

Editor’s Note (Oct. 2, 2020): This page is not being updated. For the latest status of each project in this legislative plan, please see the Legislation page or the projects’ individual bill pages.

On Wednesday, April 29, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) released a special legislative plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that is devoted to improving China’s public health legislation. According to an NPCSC spokesperson, the pandemic has exposed the “gaps” in and the “weaknesses” of the current legal scheme. Because to fix those problems many laws need to be enacted or updated, the authorities thought it appropriate to formulate a legislative plan to proceed in a coordinated manner. The spokesperson also said that the legislature would approach different laws in different ways: some would need complete overhauls, while some (like newer ones) would need only “targeted” changes. Finally, as expected, the NPCSC will focus on public health legislation in the near future, and other legislative projects would be deprioritized as a result.

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Translation: 13th NPC Standing Committee Five-Year Legislative Plan

On Friday, the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) held a Legislative Work Conference and released its five-year legislative plan, which we translated in full below. We will start first with a brief introduction to the NPCSC’s five-year legislative plans in general and an overview of the newest plan.

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NPCSC Solicits Public Comments on Draft Amendment to Criminal Procedure Law (Trial in Absentia Procedures Translated) (UPDATED)

UPDATE (May 11, 2018): The link to an English translation of the draft amendment is added below.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comments on a new draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law (刑事诉讼法) that it just considered at its session last month. The comments period ends on June 7, 2018. We expect the amendment to pass by late August at the latest.

The original Chinese (PDF) version is available here. An English translation is available on China Law Translate. Its accompanying explanation can be read here.

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A Guide to 2018 State Council Institutional Reforms

Editor’s Note: On December 13, 2022, we updated this page with an embedded PDF version of our summary of the 2018 State Council reorganization plan, approved on March 17, 2018. We have made no substantive change to our original summary. We also removed introductions to the various types of State Council bodies, which are now available on this page, along with the State Council’s current organizational chart. This page before the update was archived here.

Details of the eighth round of State Council reorganization in the “Reform and Opening up” era were revealed to the delegates attending the ongoing 1st Session of the 13th NPC on Tuesday. Previous rounds took place in 1982, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013. In this post, we present our own summary of the 2018 State Council Institutional Reform Plan (国务院机构改革方案). The Communist Party on March 21 released the Plan to Deepen Reform of Party and State Institutions, the section of which concerning the State Council is summarized below. While some other parts of the plan also made changes to the State Council’s organizational structure, these changes are NOT reflected in the summary.

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Annotated Translation: 2018 Amendment to the P.R.C. Constitution (Version 2.0)

On March 11, 2018, the 1st Session of the 13th NPC adopted the following Constitutional Amendment with 2,958 votes in favor, two against, and three abstentions. Sixteen delegates were absent and one vote cast was declared invalid.

We published the original annotated English translation of this Constitutional Amendment on the day it was adopted. Given the public’s unabated interest in this important document ever since, on February 7, 2019, we comprehensively updated our annotations of the Amendment—in particular those of the several articles that amended the Preamble. We also updated the translation in accordance with our recent translation of the entire Constitution as amended. Thanks to Taige Hu’s substantial contribution to this project.

The original text of the Amendment and our translation are placed in block quotes below, followed by our annotation of each article. Some of the texts are formatted to enhance readability.

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