August 2024: Bills Shelved, Legislative Session Delayed

Chinese legislature to consider bills on anti-corruption, military education, public health emergency, national parks, and more at postponed session in September.

Welcome back to NPC Observer Monthly, a monthly newsletter about China’s national legislature: the National People’s Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee (NPCSC).

Today’s edition is bit different. Last month was the first August in 40 years in which the NPCSC did not meet¹—its regular August session has been postponed to next week (September 10–13). With no non-news content planned for this issue, I’ve decided to cross-post our preview of the upcoming NPCSC session below.

But before diving into that, there was another important development last month. The NPCSC Gazette disclosed that the legislature had decided in June to permanently shelved two bills reviewed two years earlier: the draft Compulsory Civil Enforcement Law [民事强制执行法] and a draft decision authorizing the State Council to pilot reforms of the rural residential land system. As I explained in this post, the legislature has invoked the bill-shelving procedure only rarely, and it set those bills aside because the Communist Party has yet to provide clear guidance on the relevant reforms. Bills on the same issues may eventually return to the NPCSC, however.

With that update out of the way, if you’ve already read our preview of the NPCSC’s upcoming meeting on our main site, thank you and feel free to stop here. Otherwise, read on!

September is shaping up to be a much busier month, with not just the legislative session but also a high-profile ceremony to mark the NPC’s 70^th anniversary. I’ll be back in your inbox next month with a full rundown. —Changhao

---

Aerial view of the former Hoh Xil Nature Reserve, now part of the Three-River-Source National Park in Qinghai. Photo by Michael Wong/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.

[The following post was originally published on NPC Observer]

NPCSC Session Watch: Anti-Corruption, Defense Education, Public Health Emergency, Government Debt, National Parks & State Honors

China’s top legislature, the 14^th NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC), will convene for its eleventh session from September 10 to 13, the Council of Chairpersons decided on Tuesday, August 27. The session will consider eight legislative bills, according to the Council’s proposed agenda. The session will also adopt a decision to confer state honors on a slate of individuals nominated by the Communist Party to mark the 75^th anniversary of the People’s Republic on October 1. The legislature likely has delayed its typical August session to mid-September to announce the conferral decision closer to the National Day holiday. (Five years ago, it held a special session on September 17 for that very purpose.) Lastly, the session will hear a few reports that might be of interest. We preview these agenda items below.

Returning Bills

Five bills have been scheduled for further review.

First, the draft revision to the National Defense Education Law [国防教育法] and the draft amendment to the Statistics Law [统计法] return for their second—and most likely final—review. We will cover them in our newsletter after they pass.

Second, the draft revision to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases [传染病防治法], the draft Energy Law [能源法], and the draft revision to the Anti–Money Laundering Law [反洗钱法] also return for their second review. While one additional round of deliberations likely awaits each of them, we cannot rule out the possibility that the NPCSC might also approve them next [week].

New Bills

Four new bills have been submitted for review.

First, the State Council submitted a draft Public Health Emergency Response Law [突发公共卫生事件应对法]. This project was not part of the legislature’s April 2020 special legislative plan to improve public-health legislation. But, in June 2020, Xi Jinping disclosed in a speech to a group of public-health experts and scholars that the authorities had decided to enact such a law. This law is expected to build on the State Council’s Public Health Emergency Response Regulations [突发公共卫生事件应急条例], promulgated soon after the 2003 SARS epidemic, and to draw on China’s Covid-response experience. Once enacted, it will become a key pillar of China’s public health legislation alongside the (recently revised) Emergency Response Law [突发事件应对法] (which covers all types of emergencies) and the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases now under revision (which focuses on one subset of public health emergencies: outbreaks of infectious diseases). A key task for lawmakers, therefore, is to ensure coordination among the three statutes and minimize overlaps and conflicts. We expect the bill to pass after three reviews.

Second, the State Council also submitted a draft National Parks Law [国家公园法]. The Party first decided to “establish a system of national parks” at its 2013 Third Plenum, and placed national legislation on national parks on the official to-do list in 2017. After several years of trial run, China officially established the first (and so far the only) batch of five national parks in late 2021. A few months later, the National Park Administration released a draft National Parks Law for public comment. According to the draft, the law would govern, among others, the process for planning and establishing national parks, the conservation and management of national parks, as well as the provision of public services and law enforcement in national parks. We expect this bill to pass after two or three reviews.

Third, the State Supervision Commission submitted a draft amendment to the Supervision Law [监察法]. The Party recently called for updating this law at the Third Plenum in July. As we wrote in covering the Plenum’s resulting policy document:

The Supervision Law, enacted 2018, is the organic statute of supervision commissions, China’s state anti-corruption bodies, which are one and the same as the Party’s disciplinary inspection commissions at the corresponding levels. The Law prescribes the organizational structure of supervision commissions and outlines the scope of their authority and the procedures they ought to follow. A bill to update the Law has been scheduled for review in 2024, and a draft was reportedly circulated among the disciplinary apparatus for comment in late 2023. So far, there has been little public information on the proposed changes, however.

Depending on the scope of the draft amendment, it may pass after two or three reviews.

Finally, as already mentioned, the Council of Chairpersons submitted a bill to confer state honors on 14 individuals to celebrate the PRC’s 75^th anniversary. Four of them will receive the Medal of the Republic [共和国勋章], which by law is awarded to “distinguished individuals who have made enormous contributions and performed remarkable feats in the building of socialism with Chinese characteristics and in defending the State.” They include three past recipients of China’s Highest Science and Technology Award—one aerospace engineer, one hematologist, and one agronomist—as well as a 93-year-old veteran of the Chinese Civil War and Korean War. The other ten nominees come from a variety of fields, including engineering, cinema, social sciences, sports, and healthcare, and will receive as-yet unannounced state honorary titles in recognition of their “major contributions to” and “renown in” their respective fields. In total, the Party’s 14 nominees include two women, one ethnic minority, and one non-Party individual; three nominees are being honored posthumously. Once the NPCSC adopts the bill next [week], Xi Jinping, in his capacity as PRC president, will sign an order to formally confer the honors. The authorities are expected to hold a ceremony on the eve of the National Day to honor the recipients. For an introduction to China’s state honors system, please check out this explainer.

Next [week], the NPCSC will also hear two reports by the State Council on, respectively, the Chinese economy and budget implementation in the first half of 2024, as well as its report on the management of government debt in 2023.

1. The NPCSC didn’t meet in August 1984 because it wasn’t consistently meeting in even-numbered months at that time. That year, it met in February, May, July, September, and November.