Chinese top legislature began Sunday the first deliberation of the draft of the securities law amendment, which aims to solve the major problems facing the country's sluggish stock markets.

The draft with 229 clauses, including 29 newly-added ones and 95 revised ones, was submitted to the 15th session of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) starting from April 24 to 27.

The draft mainly added some clauses to perfect the supervision mechanism on listed companies and securities companies, establish a special fund to protect investor's rights, authorize more power of the securities watchdogs and strengthen the strike on managers with misconduct and malpractice.

"The securities law, which took effect as of July 1, 1999, has been blamed for lacking supervision on rampant irregularities in stock markets. It has not adapted to the current situation of China's capital markets," said Zhou Zhengqing, vice chairman of the NPC Financial and Economic Committee.

Zhou said that the current law couldn't effectively protect the interests of small investors. It lacks concrete clauses to crack down the illegal operations of some securities companies. Some clauses in the law become outdated to meet the new situation due to the latest development of stock markets.

In recent years, there has been a push for the revision of the securities law. Several hundred NPC deputies proposed bills to revise the law during the past NPC plenary meetings.

Zhou's committee set up a special group for drafting the amendment to the securities law in July 2003, which also was listed on the legislation plan of the 10th NPC Standing Committee.

(Xinhua News Agency April 25, 2005)