Government officials should be banned from the National People's Congress and the majority of delegates should represent farmers, an outspoken academic said yesterday.
Hu Angang, director of the Centre for China Studies, run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, was speaking before the opening on Tuesday of the annual session of the NPC in Beijing.
'The NPC should not be a rubber stamp and a retirement home,' he said.
'Nearly all the senior posts in the NPC are held by current or former officials. But the NPC is supposed to supervise the Government and the State Council and be non-governmental.
'So I propose that government officials, current or retired, should not serve in the NPC. It should be composed of experts from different sectors.'
His other proposal was to make representatives of farmers reflect the rural majority in the population. Official estimates put the rural population at 900 million, out of a total population of 1.3 billion.
'Currently, less than 20 per cent of the delegates represent farmers, most of them rural officials. Four farm votes are equal to one urban vote. The result is that rural provinces such as Henan, with a population of 86 million, has very few deputies,' he said.
