The Ninth National
People's
Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee, which is expected to
convene the last session of its five-year term later this month,
has so far passed 112 laws.
The laws include one amendment to the Constitution, 74 ordinary
laws, eight legal interpretations and 29 decisions on legal issues,
said NPC Law Committee vice-chairman Qiao Xiaoyang.
It
is not yet known whether the outgoing legislature will pass any
more new laws.
In
China, the NPC and its Standing Committee is the top law-making
body of the country, and laws, legal interpretations and decisions
on legal issues it enacts have equal force and effect.
China has established seven major legal categories, including
constitutional, civil and commercial, administrative, economic,
social, criminal and litigation and non-litigation procedure laws,
Qiao said, adding that a socialist legal system with Chinese
characteristics is taking form.
In
1999, the second session of the Ninth NPC passed an amendment to
the Constitution, which incorporated into the Constitution the Deng
Xiaoping Theory and the principle of governing the country
according to law.
The legislature on economic development has been strengthened and
as many as 26 relevant laws have been enacted over the past five
years, including the Securities Law, the law on bankruptcy and the
Governmental Procurement Law, said Chen Guangyi, chairman of Ninth
NPC Financial and Economic Committee.
Before and after China's entry into the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the Ninth NPC Standing Committee has also revised a series
of relevant laws on trade and intellectual property protection,
which earned worldwide praise.
In
view of the fundamental role of agriculture in China's economy, the
Ninth NPC has enacted and revised some laws on agriculture and
rural affairs, said Gao Dezhan, chairman of the Ninth NPC
Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee.
The enacted law on rural land contracting in particular is of vital
significance to protecting the fundamental interests of Chinese
farmers and to promoting the development of the farming industry in
China, Gao stressed.
A
series of laws regarding the fundamental systems of the state,such
as the law on supervision and the civil law, have been drafted and
tabled to the Ninth NPC Standing Committee for first round of
deliberation, said Qiao.
In
response to increasing terrorist acts across the world and rampant
organized crime in some areas of the country, the Ninth NPC
Standing Committee has revised the Criminal Law and made
interpretations on the law.
According to Qiao, the committee has also adopted various measures
to improve the quality of law-making.
It
has changed the number of rounds of deliberation on a draft law
from two to three, he said, adding that the law on non-public
education and the revised law on cultural relics protection have
gone through four rounds of deliberation while the Securities Law
and the Contract Law did five rounds.
By
now, the NPC and its Standing Committee have passed more than 400
laws, legal interpretations and decisions on relevant legal
issues.
China has set an objective of establishing a socialist legal system
with Chinese characteristics by 2010, and such an objective"is
certainly achievable", said Qiao.
(People's Daily February 21, 2003)