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)
