Legislative bodies yesterday heard reports on the preparation of China's first law on family planning, the development of rural co-operative organs and a plan to check the implementation of the law protecting minor's rights.

China's first legislation on family planning will not break through the current policy, according to a senior family planning official.

"The draft law would better protect individuals concerning their rights to child-bearing and provide a legal basis for the family planning policy,'' said Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Family Planning Commission.

Zhang briefed the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) yesterday before the draft law on population and family planning is submitted to the national legislators today for preliminary reading.

The 21st session of the NPC Standing Committee, which opens today, is expected to review nine draft legislations including the one on family planning.

Zhang's commission is mainly responsible for the drafting of the legislation.

"The law is designed to ensure sustainable development of population and social and economic development,'' Zhang said.

Since the implementation of the family planning policy in the early 1970s, the nation has been vigorously working on improving reproductive health and family-planning services and promoting these services on the basis of individual choices, according to Zhang.

In other development, the NPC Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee yesterday heard a report on the development of farmers' supply and marketing co-operatives during the past six years.

The NPC Standing Committee, China's top legislative body, has listed the legislation on the supply and marketing co-operatives on their legislative agenda, according to Buhe, vice-chairman of the committee.

Concerning the protection of minor's rights, NPC Internal and Judicial Committee will dispatch five groups of legislators next month to check the implementation of the 10-year-old Law on the Protection of Minor's Rights. They will visit Heilongjiang, Hunan and Yunnan provinces, city of Shanghai and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The legislators will focus their attention on the existence of things like pornography and violence that hamper the healthy development of minors, protection of their rights to receive education and to be free from violence, as well as the crackdown on juvenile delinquency. They will also check to see that child-labour is prohibited.

(China Daily 04/24/2001)