The National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, will start its new five-year term in March. In the past five years, the NPC, defined by the Constitution as the organ of supreme power, has conducted fruitful exploration in introducing more public participation in the legislation process. The most impressive progress is that the voices of the vox populi have been given rising importance over the formulation of laws that affect people's daily lives. Public participation in the legislation process has been written into institutions.

Legislative hearings

Last May, the Standing Committee of Gansu Provincial People's Congress held its first ever legislative hearing, where 16 representatives were selected from the 156 applicants. This hearing was about the controversial rules of the provincial regulations on the protection of consumers' rights and interests. The focal point of the hearing was whether recipients of medical treatment and agency services should also be defined as consumers.

Kang Changrong, a participant in the hearing and resident of Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province, said, "Allowing ordinary citizens into the procedures of law and regulation formulation is one form of real democracy."

Christine Chung, China Program Director of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and long-time observer of the legislative hearing in China, noted that China's progress in opening up legislative procedures was visible as economically backward areas like Gansu have started the practice of legislative hearings.

In 1996, the term "public hearing procedure" appeared in a law, the Law on Administrative Penalty, for the first time in China. In September 1999, the first legislative hearing in China took place in southern Guangdong Province. The Legislation Law that came out in 2000 stipulates that the legislature shall listen to the opinions of various quarters by holding forums, seminars and hearings. The next few years have seen a rising number of legislative hearings, held mainly by legislature at the provincial level.