Explainer: What Happens to the Delegate Bills Introduced During Annual NPC Sessions?

China’s national legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), will convene for its 2024 session in just a month. Such annual gatherings offer the NPC’s almost 3,000 delegates a yearly window to introduce “bills” [议案]. A bill is sponsored by 30 or more delegates or by a delegation, and calls on the legislature itself—not any other Party-state institution—to perform an act, legislative or otherwise. The vast majority of bills have been “legislative bills” [法律案]—that is, they propose to enact, amend, repeal, interpret, or codify laws. During the last two NPCs (2013–2022), the delegates introduced an average of 465 bills per year and all but a few (~98%) were legislative bills.1

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NPC Calendar: February 2024

Here is our recap of NPC-related events in February 2024 at our monthly newsletter.

The 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) will convene for its 8th session in late February. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet shortly after the Lunar New Year holiday (which ends on February 17) to decide on the agenda and dates of the session.

The NPCSC will primarily make preparations for the 2024 NPC session at its upcoming meeting, but may still review one or two legislative bills. Possible candidates include:

This post was updated on January 31, 2024 at 19:05 ET to add the draft Energy Law and Accounting Law amendment to the list of potential bills to be reviewed.

Year in Review: The NPC and the Observer in 2023

As we bid farewell to 2023, we reflect on work of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and that of our own in the past year.

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NPC Calendar: January 2024

Here is our recap of NPC-related events in January 2024 at our monthly newsletter.

The following laws take effect on January 1:

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is seeking public comment on the following bills through January 27:

The NPCSC will convene for its next regularly scheduled session in late February.

China’s Top Legislation-Review Body Halts Local Governments’ Collective Punishment of Telecom Fraudsters’ Families

Telecom fraud is a serious problem in China. During the first ten months of 2023, Chinese authorities indicted over 34,000 individuals for telecom fraud and more than 200,000 for related crimes, including aiding telecom fraud and concealing criminal proceeds, according to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. In 2022, China’s top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), passed the Law Against Telecom Network Fraud [反电信网络诈骗法] to bolster efforts to combat telecom fraud. The law, among other things, authorizes severe restrictions on scammers’ access to telecom and financial accounts and tools that are often implicated in fraud activities.

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NPCSC Seeks Public Comment on 7 Bills: Legislative Oversight, State Council Operation, Border Health, Tariffs, Mineral Resources, Emergency Response & More

China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), is soliciting public comment on the following seven bills through January 27, 2024:

Draft NameChinese TextExplanatory Document
State Council Organic Law (2nd Draft Revision)
国务院组织法修订草案二次审议稿		PDF · ΔPDF
Emergency Response and Management Law (2nd Draft)
突发事件应对管理法草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Rural Collective Economic Organizations Law (2nd Draft)
农村集体经济组织法草案二次审议稿		PDFPDF
Law on the Oversight by the Standing Committees of People’s Congresses at All Levels (Draft Amendment)
各级人民代表大会常务委员会监督法修正草案		PDF ΔPDF
Border Health and Quarantine Law (Draft Revision)
国境卫生检疫法修订草案		PDF ΔPDF
Mineral Resources Law (Draft Revision)
矿产资源法修订草案		PDF ΔPDF
Tariff Law (Draft)
关税法草案		PDF Δ (main text)
PDF (tariff schedule)
⚠️ The schedule is 1,486 pages long and 279 MB in size ⚠️		PDF

English translations will be provided if and when available. All explanatory documents are in Chinese and compiled in a single PDF; the links above will take you to the corresponding pages in the PDF only if you use a desktop browser—this does not work on a phone or a tablet.

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NPCSC Session Watch: Chinese-Style Constitutional Review, Legislative Oversight, Charity Regulation, Border Health, Emergency Management & Mineral Resources (Updated)

China’s top legislature, the 14th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its seventh session from December 25 to 29, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, December 18. The session’s tentative agenda includes twelve legislative bills, which we preview below.

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Politburo Whisperer on Advancing “Foreign-Related Rule of Law”

By Moritz Rudolf

Prof. Huang Huikang giving a lecture on developing foreign-related legal system to the Politburo on November 27, 2023. Screenshot of CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo program.

In official Chinese discourse, “foreign-related rule of law” (FRROL) [涉外法治] plays a crucial role in achieving the Communist Party’s Second Centenary Goal of “building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization” by 2049. Yet FRROL is for the most part ignored outside of the PRC. This is a mistake. Understanding this concept is essential to grasping the fine-tuning of China’s global outreach.

In light of the Politburo’s November 27, 2023 group study session on FRROL, this post traces the evolving official framing of the concept. It also introduces and critically analyzes the recommendations for advancing FRROL that Prof. Huang Huikang [黄惠康], the most prominent authority on the subject within the PRC, likely shared with Chinese leaders at the study session. This post ends by assessing the outlook of the concept.

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NPC Calendar: December 2023

Here is our recap of NPC-related events in December 2023 at our monthly newsletter.

December 4 is China’s 10th National Constitution Day [国家宪法日].

The 14th NPC Standing Committee will convene for its 7th session in late December. The Council of Chairpersons is expected to meet in mid-December to decide on the agenda and dates of the session. The session is expected to review the draft revision to the State Council Organic Law [国务院组织法] and is scheduled to review the following bills according to the NPCSC’s 2023 legislative work plan:

The session is also likely to review one or more of the following bills:

Finally, the session will hear the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission’s annual report on “recording and review” [备案审查] and is expected to adopt a decision on “improving and strengthening the system of recording and review.”

Update (Dec. 1, 2023): This post was updated to include the draft Mineral Resources Law revision as a possible bill for review after it was approved “in principle” by the executive meeting of the State Council on December 1.

NPC Calendar: November 2023

Here is our recap of NPC-related events in November 2023 at our monthly newsletter.

The NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) is soliciting public comment on the following bills through November 23:

The NPCSC will convene for its next regularly scheduled session in late December.