Compared with public hearings and opinion solicitation concerning law making in some Chinese cities, north China's Tianjin Municipality has taken much bolder action by entrusting a local attorney association to draft a local law.
The association is supposed to draft a local law entitled "Measures on Public Hearings of the Tianjin Local Legislature", and will get 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) as payment.
Gao Shaolin, an official of the Standing Committee of the Tianjin Municipal People's Congress, said it is a new trial for China's people's congress system.
Chinese legislation comes mainly from the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee members, most of whom live in the national capital of Beijing and can meet regularly.
The other NPC deputies, representing the country's 1.3 billion people and scattered in more than 30 provincial-level regions, only play a small role in the enactment and amendment of major laws, such as the Constitution and the Criminal Law, which must be deliberated and adopted at NPC annual full sessions.
In the eyes of Professor Zhu Guanglei of elite Nankai University, Tianjin's municipal People's Congress' act is a symbol that China's law making attitude is right on the professional track.
Li Haibo, a lawyer who has participated in the draft work, said that since lawyers are more familiar with certain regulations, laws and legal connections among various social conflicts, and serve as links between lawmakers and citizens, "Lawyers' participation will make the law more feasible and professional," Li acknowledged.
The draft team is composed of 12 lawyers from the fields of administration law, real estate and legal affairs who have solicited scholars' opinions, reports on public hearings concerning legislature and the practices of foreign countries.
Zhu said professional teams have also tackled some problems in legislation.
Of course, local law making organs have a long way to go to ensure that the "people's will is reflected in laws." The Tianjin Municipal People's Congress has asked that lawmakers to go to the grassroots level to solicit public opinions in various forms, such as symposia and hearings, to ensure that every law is acceptable to people and adaptable to the present situation.
In the past, the government and the standing committee of people's congresses of various levels decided on laws, though some local laws and regulations were directly worked out by the provincial-level governments.
Common Chinese have been allowed to voice their views on law-making since the late 1990s. Normally, legislatures of various levels have held public hearings, inviting commoners to attend their meetings or publish draft laws to solicit public views for further revisions.
When China's top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), solicited public opinions for revising the draft law on property rights in early July, more than 10,032 submissions were received via the Internet, mail and the media. It was the 12th law for which the legislature introduced a nationwide public solicitation mechanism in the law drafting period.
Tianjin may be the first city to have non-government professionals involved in law enacting, but will probably not be the only one to do so. Guangdong and Anhui provinces in south and east China and Chongqing Municipality in the southwest have also published policies to allow the public to participate in lawmaking.
(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2005)
