Tag: Recording & Review

NPCSC Session Watch: Civil Code, Securities Law, Yangtze River Protection, Taiwanese Investments & Export Control (Updated)

UPDATE (Dec. 17, 2019): It appears that a complete Civil Code has indeed been submitted for review at the NPCSC’s upcoming session. Here is an unofficial but authentic draft (PDF).

The Council of Chairpersons decided on Monday, December 16 to convene the 15th session of the 13th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) from December 23 to 28. The NPCSC will review at least 11 legislative bills at its upcoming six-day session. A quick rundown follows.

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Recording & Review Pt. 3: Are Parrots Bred in Captivity Still “Wild”?

Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels.

Common sense would answer no. But the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) disagreed—according to its interpretation of a Criminal Law provision that punishes trade in “rare and endangered wild animals.” A Shenzhen man, convicted in 2017 under this provision for buying and selling parrots he himself bred, contested this interpretation before the NPC Standing Committee’s Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC)—the body charged with reviewing judicial interpretations (among other types of documents) at the request of citizens for any inconsistency with statutes. The Commission recently informed the man that the SPC would amend the interpretation. Yet it is far from clear that he won this battle. In this third installment of Recording & Review, we will tell the story of Wang Peng [王鹏] and his parrots.

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Recording & Review Pt. 2: The Demise of “Conditional Arrest”

Supreme People’s Procuratorate building. Photo by SPP, via Sohu.

In the first installment of the Recording & Review series, we presented a comprehensive introduction to the recording and review (R&R) [备案审查] process in the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC). Beginning with this installment, we will examine cases where citizens and organizations successfully challenged the legality of normative documents using the R&R procedure. While these cases might not be new, a close examination of them will still offer us important insight into the R&R system—on how it actually operates and what its limitations are.

In July 2017, the Southern Metropolis reported that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) had recently discontinued a controversial type of arrest after the NPCSC—more specifically its Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC)—reviewed its constitutionality and legality at the request of Mr. Miao Yongjun, an Inner Mongolian lawyer. Before recounting Mr. Miao’s encounter with the R&R system, we will first briefly introduce the now-abolished type of arrest invented by the SPP.

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NPCSC Now Researching Expansion of Constitutional Review

In a recent exclusive interview with the Legal Daily, LIANG Ying (梁鹰), director of the Office for Recording and Reviewing Regulations under the Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) of the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), revealed that authorities are now contemplating significant expansion of the scope of constitutional review (合宪性审查), following the Communist Party’s decision to “advance constitutional review” at its 19th Congress. The theoretical and practical feasibility of the reforms that Liang mentioned was still under research. And it is unknown at this point whether, or when, those proposed reforms would be implemented. But the fact that the authorities have chosen to disclose them indicates similar reforms will be eventually implemented. This interview is thus worth paying close attention to. Some unorganized thoughts follow the summary of the interview. All emphases below are ours.

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Recording & Review: An Introduction to Constitutional Review with Chinese Characteristics

Editor’s Note (Sept. 2, 2020): This post is NOT up to date and has been superseded by a more recent introduction to “recording and review,” which discusses the latest governing rules.

On October 18, 2017, halfway through his mind-numbing three-hour report to the Communist Party’s 19th National Congress, President Xi Jinping called for “advancing the work of constitutional review” [推进合宪性审查工作]. We then noted, and Chinese media later confirmed, that it was the first time such expression appeared in Party documents. While the expression might be novel, the concept of constitutional review is not—it has been an inherent part of “recording and review” (“R&R”) [备案审查] since at least 1982. For purposes of our discussion,[1] R&R is a process whereby various governmental entities with lawmaking powers record the legislation they enact with the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), and the NPCSC then, through several established mechanisms, review such legislation for potential violations of the Constitution and national laws and take appropriate actions. The primary goal is to ensure uniformity in the hierarchical legal system.

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