By LI LI
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Chen De, a government official from a small city in China's northeast and member of the CPPCC National Committee, does a final check on his proposals before handing them over
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Deep concentration
When 43-year-old Chen De was made a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in January, he was congratulated by many people.
The government official administrating industry and commerce in a city on the border with North Korea, in northeastern Liaoning Province, was the first person from his home city appointed to the committee in its 59-year history.
Chen's wife was the only person feeling unhappy. To her, the new post meant her husband would have to spend a part of his squeezed spare time, between his full-time job and a three-decade hobby of collecting items on Mao Zedong, investigating social issues and writing proposals to the CPPCC. This would further postpone Chen's teenage daughter's request to go camping with papa and mama one weekend, "just like everyone else."
Chen, who has come to Beijing for the first annual session of the 11th CPPCC National Committee opening on March 3, feels his brand new five-year term means both a great honor and heavy responsibilities. He told Beijing Review, "I am willing to study and work harder to write high-quality proposals on public issues with reasonable solutions."
Participating in a two-day training course before the opening of the annual session, the new members of CPPCC National Committee learned how to be competent CPPCC National Committee members by listening to lectures on CPPCC history, functions, international and domestic situations, as well as talks given by old CPPCC National Committee members on their own experiences and how to write a high-quality proposal.
The CPPCC is a patriotic united front organization of the Chinese people, serving as a key mechanism for multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and a major manifestation of socialist democracy.
At present, the CPPCC consists of representatives of the CPC and non-Communist parties, personages without party affiliation, and representatives of people's organizations, ethnic minorities and various social strata.
Of the 2,237 members of the 11th CPPCC National Committee, more than 60 percent are non-communist and over 55 percent are new members. The over 1,000 new members brought suggestions and proposals as varied as they are delicately prepared to the first annual session. Some proposals focus on top-ranking issues concerning the majority of the population, such as rising inflation and housing prices, limited coverage of social security, insufficient government input in medical care, others put forward issues of strategic significance for China's development and still others originate from proposal authors' own work experience, often exposing what went wrong in the implementation of a government policy.
The new members of the top advisory body are almost exceptionally confident that their suggestions and proposals will be carefully evaluated and responded to. Different from motions submitted to a session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, that become legally binding when they are adopted, proposals to the CPPCC are not legally binding and a department in charge of handling proposals is obliged to give a reply to each proposal.
During the five-year tenure of the just concluded 10th CPPCC National Committee, over 23,000 proposals were handled.
National policies as large as the strategy of rejuvenating the old industrial bases of the northeast and promoting the development of the non-public sector and as small as adding traditional festivals to national holidays all originated from proposals by CPPCC members.