Welcome to a special issue of NPC Observer Monthly.
NPC Observer turns ten today, so I thought I’d crosspost my retrospective.
Due to the circumstances explained below, I had to put this newsletter essentially on hold during the past seven months. I hope to get back on track soon, and thanks for staying with us during this period of transition. —Changhao
Today is NPC Observer’s tenth birthday.
It feels like only yesterday when I celebrated the site’s fifth anniversary. I don’t want to completely rehash that post, even though its sentiment obviously stands. Nor do I wish to limit this piece to only the five years since, as that would seem to diminish the significance of the present occasion.
As I’m typing these words in my fourth Airbnb in Cologne—NPC Observer’s and my new home—I thought I’d recount the site’s history in five (artificial) chapters, each associated with one of its past and present bases of operations, with the fifth still to be written.
Los Angeles (2016.10–2016.12). The story must begin with the City of Angels, even though I spent less than two months there running NPC Observer. It was there that I conceived of a blog to write about the National People’s Congress (NPC). And it was in my Westwood apartment, on the evening of October 18, 2016, that I published the first post.
Some of my earliest decisions from this period—both stylistic and substantive—have persisted to this day: NPC Observer still runs on the same WordPress theme, which features a main column displaying a reverse-chronological list of posts, an informational sidebar, and a photo of the Great Hall of the People as the header image. Six of the seven pieces I wrote in Los Angeles were about the October 2016 NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC) session. And coverage of legislative sessions remains a staple of our output, even though our content would soon diversify.
Nanjing (2016.12–2017.08). In December 2016, with law school applications submitted, I moved back home to continue my gap year. With a bit of time on my hands during the following eight months, I wrote about a variety of topics (including the State Council’s 2017 legislative plan), covered our first plenary NPC session, and published our first translation, first detailed legislation summary, and first piece by a guest author.
I also began adding standing resources to the site, including two pages that respectively archive the draft laws released by the NPCSC and State Council agencies for public comment, gradually moving NPC Observer away from being simply a “blog.”
In short, those few months in Nanjing gave me an early opportunity to experiment—to see what works and what doesn’t—and offered a glimpse into the possibilities of this platform.
Cambridge (2017.08–2021.07). In summer 2017, I moved back to the United States and ended up staying in the Boston area for the next four years—during which I finished law school, passed the bar, survived the first 16 months of a global pandemic, and (remotely) started working at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center.
Before any of that happened, though, 1L immediately hit me like a ton of bricks (or, rather, casebooks), creating immense time-management challenges. While my time in law school is now largely a blur due to (among other things) chronic sleep deprivation, I do recall spending many late nights in the library and study rooms, sacrificing some weekends and holidays, and trying to squeeze in work during class breaks (translating the Supervision Law’s second draft, for example).
This period was one of tremendous growth for both the site and myself. In December 2017, I recruited the site’s first research assistant, ending the era of one-man operation. Soon thereafter, the 13th NPC began with a bang—enacting historic constitutional amendments and state institutional reforms—which drew global attention and gave a welcome boost to NPC Observer’s reach. During those four years, the site witnessed sustained year-on-year growth in traffic (see chart below); I also received my first media inquiries and my first invitation to give a talk on the NPC.
New Haven (2021.08–2026.08). In August 2021, I relocated to New Haven as Yale Law School fully resumed in-person operations, and would call the Elm City home for the next five years.
I treated NPC Observer as a (small) part of my project at the Paul Tsai China Center. And thanks to the freedom the Center afforded me, I was able to invest a lot more time in the site than I previously could. I published most of our legislation deep dives and law explainers during this period, improved and expanded the site’s resources, and implemented various technical and aesthetic upgrades.
Yet it was also during this period that, for the first time, running the site felt not only like work (to be fair, I made it so)—but also sometimes like a chore. This realization prompted me to adjust our typical publishing routine—already in place for about five years—to do away with thorough post-session recaps of passed bills. Instead of trying to be comprehensive for its own sake, I chose to focus on the developments that I find important or interesting. I then also launched our Substack newsletter, NPC Observer Monthly, to supplement the somewhat reduced programming on this main site, in part by housing my more casual or tentative observations and analyses.
Cologne (2026.09–?). In late March, I was unexpectedly told that my Yale position would be eliminated in four months due to funding constraints. As I scrambled to respond to this news, I could do only the bare minimum to maintain this site and had to put the newsletter essentially on hold. In the end, with the prospect of (lawfully) remaining in the United States growing increasingly dim, I made the difficult decision to leave the country where I had lived almost my entire adult life and relocate to Germany to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Cologne, focusing on the system of recording and review. NPC Observer and I thus both began a new chapter in the Domstadt.
Looking back, I can’t say I’m completely surprised that I’m still running the site ten years later, knowing my ability to persevere in the pursuit of my interests.
But I never imagined that the readership would grow as large as it is and last as long as it has—which has been a key motivator for keeping the project alive.
I never imagined that a site originally envisioned as a personal blog would become a team effort and evolve into a repository of resources on the NPC and Chinese law more broadly.
I never imagined that NPC Observer would become such a trusted source that our work would be cited by journalists, policymakers, scholars, practitioners, and Wikipedians around the world—and, according to a staff member of the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission, read by people working at the NPC itself!
And I certainly never imagined the opportunities and connections the site would create for me personally.
I’m forever indebted to my past and present teammates and the guest authors for building NPC Observer into what it is today. And I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has read, supported, and promoted us over the past decade.
Looking ahead, in the short term, I hope to end the semi-hiatus soon and return to our prior level of output. In the long term, I look forward to gradually checking off the list of topics I want to write about, and I’m excited to explore in what additional ways the site can continue to grow.
Whatever the future has in store for us, I will keep following the four principles that I think have served me and the site well over the last ten years: NPC Observer should be editorially independent, should be free for everyone, should stand for quality content, and should be a fun thing to do.
With that, on to the second decade!
With pride and gratitude,
Changhao (in my capacity as the founder of NPC Observer)