NPC to Speed Up Legislation on Social Issues in 2007 -- china.org.cn

China's top legislature, the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), will intensify its legislation focusing on social affairs this year, top legislator Wu Bangguo said Sunday.

"While continuing work to improve economic legislation, we must also concentrate on strengthening legislation related to social programs to provide a solid legal foundation for building a harmonious socialist society and to ensure attainment of the legislative goal of the 10th NPC," Wu said.

The NPC Standing Committee chairman unveiled the legislative plan for 2007 when delivering a report on the work of the NPC Standing Committee at the legislature's annual plenary session.

The main legislative tasks this year include enactment of the Law on Labor Contracts, Employment Promotion Law, Social Security Law, Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes, Law on Administrative Decrees, Law on Response to Emergencies, Antitrust Law, Law on State-Owned Assets, Law to Combat Illegal Drugs, Law to Curb Illegal Activities, Law on Urban and Rural Planning, and Circular Economy Law.

In addition, the legislature will revise the Law on Scientific and Technological Progress, Civil Procedure Law, Criminal Procedure Law, Law on Food Hygiene, Law on Energy Conservation, and Law on Attorneys, according Wu.

"We have noticed that a large proportion of the laws planned to be enacted or revised in 2007 target at regulating social affairs," said Fu Yonglin, an NPC deputy from Sichuan Province.

For example, the draft employment promotion law, which was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for reading in February, prohibits discrimination against job seekers despite their ethnicity, race, gender, religious belief, age or physical disability. And the governments above the county level are required to establish an early warning system to prevent, regulate and control possible cases of large-scale unemployment.

The draft law is urgently needed as the employment situation at present and in a long period to come is not optimistic, said Fu.

Wu Bangguo said the current NPC and its Standing Committee will achieve the goal of basically establishing a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics and improving the quality of legislation before the current five-year legislative tenure ends in next March.

"Over the last four years, we passed amendments to the Constitution, the Anti-Secession Law, and formulated or revised 70 laws, judicial interpretations and legal decisions concerning legal issues, thereby making very good progress in legislative work," the top legislator said.

China is in a critical period of reform and development, in which China's economic system and social structure, the interests of different sectors of society and people's thinking and concepts are all changing profoundly, he said.

"These unprecedented social changes provide very strong vitality for China's development, but they inevitably create a wide variety of conflicts and problems as well," Wu said, adding that the legislation work should always adhere to guide political direction and the principle of putting people first, base on China's actual conditions and realities and follow the mass line.

14 Laws adopted in 2006

The NPC Standing Committee deliberated 24 draft laws and draft decisions on legal issues in 2006. Among them 14 were adopted and five were tabled to the ongoing annual session of NPC for deliberating.

The Law on Oversight, which is strongly political in nature, is related to the country's political system and system of government. Formulation of the Law on Oversight was one of the major legislative acts of the NPC. Work actually began on this law at the Sixth NPC and continued for the following two decades. The law was adopted last year.

The Law on Oversight "fully embodies the organic unity of the leadership of the Party, the position of the people as masters of the country and the running of the government according to the rule of law; correctly balances stronger oversight by people's congresses with the leadership of the Party; ... upholds the principles of democratic centralism, collective exercise of functions and powers, collective decision making and acting in accordance with the law and prescribed procedures..." said Wu.

The NPC Standing Committee in August 2006 adopted the Corporate Bankruptcy Law, aiming to protect both creditors of bankrupt enterprises and the people who work in them. The law will come into effect on June 1, 2007.

The old bankruptcy rules, promulgated in 1986 on a test basis, were widely regarded as outdated as they fail to give sufficient protection to creditors and only touch on State-owned enterprises (SOE).

The new Corporate Bankruptcy Law applies to all kinds of enterprises and financial institutions. All the country's companies and enterprises, whether state-owned or private, will have to follow a unified corporate bankruptcy law if they founder.

In a bid to safeguard children's fundamental interests and ensure their healthy growth, the NPC Standing Committee revised Compulsory Education Law and Law on Protection to Minors last year.

Other important laws passed or revised last year include Anti- money Laundering Law, Banking Oversight and Management Law, and Organic Law of the People's Court, among others.

According to the revised Organic Law of the People's Court, the Supreme People's Court retrieved the right to review death penalty cases. This was widely regarded as an important step to ensure judicial justice.

Draft property law and draft enterprise income tax law

Deliberation of draft property law and draft enterprise income tax law is an important agenda of the ongoing fifth annual session of the 10th NPC.

The property law is fundamental for standardizing property relations, and has a supporting role in the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, Wu said in his report.

As part of the draft civil code, the property law was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for the first review in 2002 after nearly 10 years of preparation.

To fully consider the interests of all social sectors, the law's drafters published the law to the public in July 2005 and pooled more than 10,000 pieces of suggestions and opinions.

After unprecedented seven times of reading, the NPC Standing Committee decided last December to put it for voting at the Fifth Session of the Tenth NPC, believing that the draft represented a crystallization of collective wisdom and was about to be mature.

China's legal experts said that such a law reflects China's basic socialist economic system and will help improve China's socialist market economy and speed up the building of a harmonious society.

Also tabled for deliberation was the draft enterprise income tax law, which suggests a unified income tax rate for domestic and foreign-funded companies at 25 percent.

The law was drafted to establish a scientific and standardized enterprises income tax system uniformly applicable to various types of enterprises and create an environment for fair competition.

"The rate of 25 percent set in the draft is relatively low in the world and will be conducive to enhancing enterprises' competitiveness and attracting foreign investment," Chinese Minister of Finance Jin Renqing told lawmakers on March 8.

Highlights of NPC Standing Committee's Work Report

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2007)