The National People's Congress' decision to consult the public about the pending revision of the personal income tax law is a milestone in China's legislation history, according to an article in Legal Daily. An excerpt follows:

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, recently said in a bulletin that a public hearing will be held on September 27 to elicit public opinion on the pending personal income tax law amendment.

Although various public hearings have already been held in some places in local-level law-making process, the hearing on personal income tax law is the first one that NPC and its Standing Committee have ever undertaken, which has tremendous significance in the development of our rule of law society.

The decision to hold the public hearing could enable more people representing different social strata to offer their opinions and advance their interests and rights, which makes citizens' participation in State affairs tangible.

According to our Constitution, citizens are entitled to manage State affairs through legal means and forms.

Holding a public hearing is also in line with our Legislation Law, which stipulates that a law-making body should listen to public views in its legislation work through various means, public hearing included.

NPC's decision to hold a public hearing in its legislation work is also the requirement of the modern state management system.

Under such a system, the extent of public participation in State affairs management is becoming a new criterion to judge whether one country is democratic or not.

One of manifestations of the public participation is that procedural justice is increasingly valued in legislation work.

To be specific, many new systems, such as public hearing, public opinion poll and panel review, have been adopted in law-making, law-enforcement and law supervision works.

In this way, the public becomes more directly involved in the State affairs management, which is also the case with NPC's initiative to hold the public hearing on the income tax law.

(China Daily September 8, 2005)