China's legislative body, the National People's Congress (NPC) on Sunday published the full text of its draft law on property rights on its website (www. npc.gov.cn) to solicit public opinion on the draft.

The draft contains five chapters and 268 items. It had been deliberated on three times by lawmakers as of the end of June.

Citizens have until August 20 to offer their feedback on the draft.

The People’s congressional bodies of the different provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities are in charge of pooling the opinions of NPC deputies, related departments, and law studies units. Data is then to be sent to the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the Standing Committee of the 10th National People's Congress.

Citizens can mail their opinions either to the people’s congresses in their provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities or directly to the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee, postcode 100805. They can also post their opinions on the NPC website.

The Commission of Legislative Affairs will revise the draft accordingly and submit a revised draft law to the NPC Standing Committee for a fourth deliberation.

The fourth plenary session of the 10th NPC will be held next March and a fifth deliberation will be voted on at the session.

Draft laws in China ordinarily go through a process involving three deliberations. However, it was decided that this draft on property rights be put through five deliberations because it aims to define and safeguard property rights that are the fundamental rights of every citizen.

One of the provisions, for example, states that property owners shall be given reasonable compensation when their properties are taken over for public use. Those who refuse to make the compensation will bear legal liability.

The draft also proposes to prohibit urban residents from buying farmland. In the last 50 years, affluent urbanites have been purchasing prime country real estate to build holiday homes and retreats.

Wang Shengming, director of the Commission of Legislative Affairs of the NPC Standing Committee said that the new law would make citizens feel more reassured of their rights to property.

The draft law also aims to protect state property by defining that administrative staff in state-owned enterprises shall bear civil, administrative or even criminal liabilities if they transfer the ownership of public property through stock or company sales at low prices.

This provision hopes to address some of the problems that have resulted from management buyouts (MBO) of state-owned enterprises. Managers were found to have compromised the interests of employees, investors and financial institutions for personal gain.

According to official statistics, China loses 40 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) of state-owned assets annually through internal mismanagement and fraud.

(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2005)