NPC Documents: Annual Work Priorities

According to public records, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) first laid out its “work priorities” [工作要点] in a written document styled as such in 1988—and for the entire five-year term of the 7^th NPCSC (1988–1993). The 8^th NPCSC (1993–1998) not only continued this practice but also adopted the first set of annual work priorities in 1995, though they were not released to the public. The 2008 work priorities were the first to have been made public, and public disclosure of such documents has become more or less consistent since 2015, but it is still not required by law. The NPCSC’s publicly available annual work priorities are collected in the table below.

While the annual work priorities cover all aspects of the NPCSC’s work, the following six typically take up the vast majority of space: (1) constitutional enforcement (added in 2018); (2) lawmaking; (3) oversight; (4) work related to NPC delegates; (5) international exchanges; (5) publicity and theoretical research; and (6) self-improvement (which primarily entails efforts to uphold the Communist Party’s leadership and capacity-building for NPC bodies). The NPCSC’s annual legislative, oversight, and delegates-related work are further detailed in separate work plans.