March 2025: Chinese Legislature’s Preliminary Agenda for 2025
Recap of 2025 NPC session. Amendments to Delegates Law. Plus: Preparations for 15th Five-Year Plan.
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).
Each issue will start with “News of the Month,” a recap of major NPC-related events from the previous month, with links to any coverage we have published on our main site, NPC Observer. If, during that month, we have also written posts that aren’t tied to current events, I’ll then provide a round-up in “Non-News of the Month.” Finally, depending on the month and my schedule, I may end an issue with discussions of an NPC-related topic that is in some way connected to the past month.
If you enjoy the newsletter, I hope you’ll share it widely. —Changhao
News of the Month
On March 5–11, the 14th NPC met for its third plenary session, a rather mundane event. At the closing meeting on March 11, it approved all reports and legislation submitted for review. All official documents from the session as well as the relevant vote results are compiled in this post:
Among the documents approved were the first major amendments to the Delegates to the National People’s Congress and Local People’s Congresses [全国人民代表大会和地方各级人民代表大会代表法] since 2010. I’ve coauthored an analysis of the amendments for The Diplomat with Professor Sun Ying, a leading Chinese scholar on the system of people’s congresses and currently a visiting scholar at Yale Law School. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:
Despite [the] common conception [that delegates play mere rubber-stamping roles], empirical research shows that delegates do in fact respond to their constituents and advocate their interests—albeit within strictly policed bounds. . . . They, in other words, bring needed information about nonsensitive matters to China’s policymakers.
To gather such information, the delegates engage in various activities when not attending the relevant people’s congress’s short, annual sessions. Under the Delegates Law, the standing body of a congress . . . is responsible for organizing such activities. . . . Such supporting work makes up part of these standing bodies’ “delegates-related work,” which (to a lesser extent) also entails supervising the delegates . . . .
In recent years, the [Communist Party] under General Secretary Xi Jinping has directed—and the people’s congresses have experimented with—various reforms, both procedural and institutional, to improve “delegates-related work,” though the specifics vary across jurisdictions. The overall goal is to make sure that delegates can—and do, in fact—effectively discharge their representative duties within politically acceptable bounds. Last month’s Delegates Law amendments codified many of those reforms, thereby both placing them on a strong legal footing and upgrading them to statutory requirements that apply nationwide.
I will return to the NPCSC’s annual work report below.
On March 11, the NPC website posted an overview of the legislature’s “Constitution-related work” and constitutional enforcement efforts in 2024, attributed to the NPCSC Legislative Affairs Commission’s Office for Constitution. I have yet to write it up, but I thought it’s not as interesting as last year’s. It heavily focuses on the legislature’s efforts to enforce the Constitution through legislation and to promote the implementation of constitutional policies by other state organs, basically by hearing the State Council’s specialized work reports. As for constitutional review and constitutional interpretation, the overview discloses little of substance.
On March 14, the NPCSC held a symposium commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Anti-Secession Law [反分裂国家法]. NPCSC Chairman Zhao Leji gave a speech, alongside four other attendees, including Lin Xiangyang, commander of the Eastern Theater Command. As the South China Morning Post notes, this “mark[ed] the first time that a PLA frontline commander has delivered a speech at such a meeting.”
On March 27, the NPCSC held a “mobilization and deployment meeting” for topical research on “various major issues” relating to the drafting of the 15th Five-Year Plan. This means that, over the subsequent four and a half months, the NPC apparatus will dispatch teams across the country to research and investigate a variety of issues relevant to the 15th Five-Year Plan. Five years ago, the legislature produced 22 research reports, which it said would later serve as references for the Party’s decisionmaking and the State Council’s drafting efforts. The full text of these reports won’t be made public immediately, but in August the NPCSC General Office is expected to submit a public report to the NPCSC summarizing this cycle’s research reports. The Party will then put forward its recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan at a Central Committee plenum in the fall. And the NPC will, lastly, approve the Plan next March.
NPC Lawmaking in 2025: A Preview
I’ll end this newsletter with a closer look at the Chinese legislature’s preliminary legislative agenda for 2025. As disclosed by the NPCSC’s work report last month, the following 34 bills have been tentatively scheduled for review this year, along with a few additional legislative tasks. I expect these bills to substantially overlap with the entries on the NPC’s finalized legislative agenda for 2025, which will be approved as early as this week and released by early May. A few of the bills listed below may end up being “backup projects” [预备审议项目]—ones that most likely won’t be submitted for review in 2025.
(The following is excerpted from the official English translation of the work report, with my edits.)
2. Advancing high-quality legislative work. . . . To enhance the systems for whole-process people’s democracy, we will revise the Organic Law of Villagers’ Committees [村民委员会组织法] and the Organic Law of Urban Residents’ Committees [城市居民委员会组织法].
We will formulate a Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress [民族团结进步促进法] to forge a strong sense of national identity, reinforcing the Chinese people as one cohesive community.
In order to strengthen the legal framework for the development of the socialist market economy, we will formulate a Private Economy Promotion Law* [民营经济促进法], a Law on National Development Plans* [国家发展规划法], a Finance Law [金融法], a Financial Stability Law* [金融稳定法], and a Cultivated Land Protection and Quality Improvement Law [耕地保护和质量提升法]. We will also revise the Anti–Unfair Competition Law* [反不正当竞争法], the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law [企业破产法], the Agriculture Law [农业法], the Fisheries Law* [渔业法], the Civil Aviation Law* [民用航空法], and the Banking Supervision and Administration Law [银行业监督管理法].
In the social and cultural sectors, we will formulate a Law on Publicity and Education on the Rule of Law* [法治宣传教育法], a Social Assistance Law [社会救助法], a Childcare Service Law [托育服务法], and a Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation Law [检察公益诉讼法]. We will also revise the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases* [传染病防治法] and the Law on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language [国家通用语言文字法].
With a focus on refining the systems concerning ecological conservation, we will continue with the compilation of an Ecological and Environmental Code [生态环境法典] and formulate a National Parks Law* [国家公园法].
To modernize the national security system and public security governance mechanisms, we will formulate an Atomic Energy Law* [原子能法], a Public Health Emergency Response Law* [突发公共卫生事件应对法], and a Hazardous Chemicals Safety Law* [危险化学品安全法]. We will also revise the Road Traffic Safety Law [道路交通安全法], the Food Safety Law [食品安全法], the Cybersecurity Law [网络安全法], the Public Security Administration Penalties Law* [治安管理处罚法], the Prison Law [监狱法], and the State Compensation Law [国家赔偿法].
In regard to legislation in areas involving foreign affairs, we will revise the Maritime Law* [海商法], the Foreign Trade Law [对外贸易法], and the Arbitration Law* [仲裁法].
We will intensify research on legislation in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, the digital economy, big data, autonomous driving, the low-altitude economy, and aerospace. We will initiate a clean-up of the laws [法律清理]. . . .
Bills already pending before the NPCSC are each marked with an asterisk (*). Among them, the draft Law on National Development Plans was submitted by the State Council on February 10 and has yet to be scheduled for an initial review (but could be as soon as next week). In addition, the following five bills that have already gone through two reviews will most certainly pass in 2025:
draft Private Economy Promotion Law;
draft Financial Stability Law;
draft revision to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases;
draft revision to the Public Security Administration Punishments Law; and
draft National Parks Law.
Two other things to note: First, the work report says the legislature will begin a clean-up of existing laws this year. As I’ve explained:
[This endeavor] serves to identify inconsistencies among existing statutory provisions as well as provisions that are grossly out of step with reality. For issues that are easier to fix (e.g., outdated statutory cross-references), the legislature may pass the necessary amendments or repeals in one go soon after the clean-up is completed. The NPCSC last cleaned up its laws in 2008–09, ahead of the anticipated establishment of the “socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics” in late 2010, and resulted in the immediate repeals of 8 laws and minor amendments to 59 others.
The 2008–09 clean-up took about a year, so we might not know the results of this round—what laws the legislature will have decided to repeal or amend—until 2026.
Second, in line with the NPC’s new norm of reviewing legislation at its annual sessions, it looks like next year’s bill will be the Law on National Development Plans to coincide with the approval of the 15th Five-Year Plan. The Ecological and Environmental Code may also be ready for the NPC’s approval in 2026, though I still believe 2027 is a more realistic target.
That’s all for this month’s issue. Thanks for reading!
The NPCSC is meeting later this month, and here’s our preview of its agenda, though an official announcement is expected as soon as this week.