NPC's critical shift to resolving social issues
Mainland lawmakers have made the critical shift from regulating commercial relationships to resolving social issues during the past five years, and the trend must continue with the new legislature, mainland legal analysts say.
During the 10th National People's Congress, which began in 2003, the mainland saw the introduction of heavyweight commercial legislation such as the Property Law and the Anti-Monopoly Law.
But there were also efforts to protect people's rights such as the Labour Contract Law, the Employment Promotion Law and the Labour Dispute Resolution Law.
Other legislative moves designed to chime in with a harmonious society included lifting the personal income tax exemption from 800 yuan to 2,000 yuan (HK$873 to HK$2,183), and the amendments to strengthen the protection of women's and minors' rights.
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Li Lin said that before the 10th NPC only 2 to 6 per cent of new legislation was related to social issues, and up to 60 per cent involved commercial matters. But in the past five years, social legislation's share of bills had expanded to 20 per cent at the NPC level, and as much as 40 per cent at the provincial and lower levels.
Legal analysts have hailed this as a correction of the previous 'one leg long and one leg short' legislative imbalance but say more needs to be done, and urgently.
For example, the draft Social Insurance Law, which was included in the legislative plan of the 10th NPC, was given a first reading only in December.
The most commonly cited reasons for the hold-up in upgrading the State Council regulations on insurance to the level of national legislation were the debate over whether or not to become a welfare state, the technical difficulties in administering such a scheme, and the jockeying for position by government departments.
'It's been more than a decade now since we began to build a social welfare system under the market economy, but we still do not have a law in this respect,' Renmin University law professor Lin Jia said. 'This is a major delay which we must address soon.'
At the same time, legislators have passed or amended a healthy proportion of laws in other areas, ranging from the environment to public health, judicial procedures and trade.
Governance has been another major focus, with the Supervision Law introduced to empower the NPC's supervisory role over administrative and judicial bodies, and the Administrative Permit Law to rein in the administrative bodies' ever-expanding power to line their own pockets. More controversially, the Anti-Secession Law was passed in 2005 to clearly set out the mainland's openness to a military solution should Taiwan make a dramatic move towards independence.
The 10th NPC also passed the necessary amendments to abolish the decades-old agricultural levy and return the ultimate decision-making power over death sentences to the Supreme People's Court.
Legal analysts generally agree that the country's highest lawmaking body has succeeded in establishing the fundamentals of a 'legal system for socialism with Chinese characteristics'.
Work on the legal system began only in the late 1970s, and the initial years were occupied with re-establishing the basic public order through criminal laws, supporting economic activities through commercial legislation and strengthening government controls through administrative laws.
Li Shuguang of the China University of Political Science and Law said it was only since 2003 that the mainland had entered the stage of 'proper rule of law', where legislation was used to 'resolve conflicts and confrontations that surfaced during the course of the reform' and opening up.
Law of the land
Major laws adopted and amended by the NPC in the past five years include:
Administrative Permit Law
Supervision Law
Property Law
Anti-Monopoly Law
Labour Contract Law
Employment Promotion Law
Labour Dispute Resolution Law
Civil Procedures Law (amended)
