Reform and Improvement of the System of People's Congresses

In commemorating the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the system of people's congresses and extolling the great achievements of the people's congresses; and in making a great deal of talk about the need to adhere to and improve the system of people's congresses, we must not forget that the achievements of the system of people's congresses have been made primarily as a result of a series of important reforms of the system of people's congresses carried out after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1978. It should be noted that the constitutional powers and functions of the people's congresses are still far from being fully realized, and the people are not yet satisfied enough. In the new situation, the people's congresses are faced with many new and growing challenges, and without reform of the system of people's congresses, the ideal superiority of the system of people's congresses cannot be brought into play, and it will not be possible to adhere to and perfect the system of people's congresses in a good way. I. The Need for Reform

According to the basic principles of Marxism, the economic base determines the superstructure. Changes in the economic base also inevitably bring about changes in the field of the superstructure. After the founding of China's highly centralized planned economic system, that is, the state holds all the resources of society, with this is the citizens are organized in a national or collective unit, the citizens have become a large organized collective machine on the dowel. Citizens have no independent economic status and economic interests, no independent personality and personal freedom, and therefore no independent political interests and demands. Just like the production process in a planned economy, the production, circulation and consumption of products are all directed and mobilized by the state through administrative power. Citizens' political participation and expression of interests are also of a state-planned nature, and the setup of the national political system and the arrangement of the political structure are also centralized, organized and planned. The key words of this political system are centralization, unity, arrangement, coherence, obedience and supervision, and of course it is not possible to talk about the will, interests and political aspirations of individuals. The creation and organization of our people's congresses reflect this highly centralized and organized political structure, all related to the planned economic system and collectively organized social structure.

Since some aspects of the highly centralized power structure of the system of people's congresses were not adapted to the needs of the development of the cause of national construction, adjustments and reforms were made in due course to enable the system of people's congresses to be continuously improved. For example, because of the over-concentration of legislative power in the National People's Congress, which was not adapted to the needs of national legislation, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress was authorized by the National People's Congress in 1955 to formulate decrees, and after 1978, in order to adapt to the country's need for the development of socialist democracy and for the improvement of the socialist legal system, three major reforms of the system of the people's congresses were made:

Firstly, the electoral system was reformed. Direct elections were expanded, short-listed elections were introduced, and delegates or voters were given the right to nominate candidates;

Second, the organizational system of the people's congresses was reformed. Standing committees shall be established in local people's congresses above the county level, and specialized committees shall be set up in the National People's Congress (NPC) and in local people's congresses above the level of larger cities;

Third, functional reform. Expanding the legislative and supervisory powers of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress may enact laws other than the basic laws, and may appoint or remove government officials between sessions of the Congress, etc.; and granting the local people's congresses and their Standing Committees the power to legislate.

It is these reforms that have served as the basis and conditions for the development of the system of people's congresses over the past 20 years. It is safe to say that without these reforms, the world-renowned achievements of the people's congress system would not have been possible, and the people's congresses would not have been able to take off their "rubber-stamp" hats, nor would they have been able to build a democratic legal system in China in the way that they are today.

Practice has shown that it is the reforms that have energized the system of people's congresses and brought about their development and improvement. Since the establishment of the people's congress system 50 years ago, China's economic base has changed dramatically, especially since the reform of the market economy, the economic system has undergone fundamental changes, and the political structure established on the planned economic system cannot but face many problems, which is that China's system of people's congresses is currently facing a number of new problems and challenges, and reform is imperative! Otherwise, some aspects of the political system will not be able to adapt to the needs of the economic base, the people's congress will be more difficult to play a role.

II. Problems and Challenges Facing the System of People's Congresses

The reform of the market economy has put forward new requirements for political development. Many of these requirements touch directly on the question of the construction of the people's congress system. The development of the market economy and the increase in social wealth have produced a plurality of interests, a civil society, an independent personality, stronger demands for the protection of interests and rights, and an inevitable intensification of political participation, phenomena that have been clearly manifested in China's social and political life in the past two years. It has given us an increasingly strong sense that forces from civil society are strongly impacting on China's political system and the system of people's congresses, calling for reform of the system of people's congresses. These forces are mainly as follows:

(1) Citizens' autonomous and spontaneous political participation, forming a challenge to the electoral and representative system. Citizens' demands for the protection of their interests, for political expression, and for political participation are becoming stronger and louder. For example, in the 2003 general election in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, there was a phenomenon in which some "white-collar" citizens, mainly owners of residential neighborhoods, came forward to run for NPC deputy on their own initiative; in Zhejiang Province, a deputy to the National People's Congress advertised in the media to solicit the opinions of citizens prior to the NPC meeting; and a deputy to the National People's Congress in Hunan Province spent 100,000 yuan of his own money on the drafting of a draft law that was referred to the NPC meeting. A representative of the National People's Congress in Hunan Province paid 100,000 yuan to draft a law to the National People's Congress, and so on. This kind of spontaneous and autonomous political participation by groups of people, out of their rights and self-interests, reflects the development of the market economy, and puts forward new requirements for democratic politics and the representative system.

In 2003, the first election of Shenzhen deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) was a feat of self-nomination by citizens, not individuals, but a group of people with industry and knowledge. This kind of action not only appeared in Shenzhen, but also spread to Beijing, Hubei and other provinces and cities. What does this kind of autonomous and spontaneous political participation by citizens reflect? It is in fact the citizens' demand for electoral reform of our existing electoral system. It is a cry of "I want to be a representative" in response to the past practice of being arranged by the organization to become a representative. Some analysts of this phenomenon have pointed out that the spontaneous urge to run for office in the Shenzhen Special Administrative Region is taking the lead in activating the democratic elements inherent in the existing system and text system of our country, indicating that, with the growing class of "middle-income earners", their initiative in requesting participation in politics and their conscientiousness in safeguarding political rights are increasing in the political development of our country. This shows that as the "middle-income" class continues to grow, their initiative to participate in politics and their consciousness of upholding political rights in China's political development are increasing. The phenomenon of the "Shenzhen election campaign" signals the development of the socialist market economy, which influences and changes the process of China's political development with its irresistible law, laying a solid social foundation for democratic politics. The people of Shenzhen, baptized by the market economy, are contributing to the further reform and improvement of the system of people's congresses and the deepening of China's political reform with a new attitude.

(2) The media and public opinion (including the voice of the Internet) are highly involved in monitoring the government and protecting the rights of citizens, and are directly questioning the responsibilities of the people's congresses and the role of the people's congresses. In the past two years, we have seen a succession of media-led actions by citizens to monitor the government and defend their rights, such as: the petition by three citizens to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) to review the State Council's "Measures for the Accommodation and Dispatch of Vagrant and Beggar Workers" for unconstitutionality caused by the case of Sun Zhigang in 2003, which resulted in a series of citizens' requests for unconstitutionality review; the petition by thousands of citizens to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) to review the State Council's Thousands of citizens have asked the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for an unconstitutional review of the Measures of the State Council on the Administration of House Demolitions and Relocations and local regulations on house demolitions and relocations that allegedly infringe upon citizens' right to private property; tens of thousands of Hepatitis B carriers have asked for an unconstitutional review of the Provisional Civil Servants' Regulations of the State Council on the medical examination standards of civil servants that allegedly discriminate against Hepatitis B carriers; and female civil servants have proposed an unconstitutional review of the State Council's Provisional Civil Servants Regulations regarding inequality in retirement age between women and men. Female civil servants have proposed an unconstitutional review of the State Council Provisional Civil Servants Regulations on the inequality between the retirement ages of women and men. We see that the media and public opinion are increasingly becoming an influential social force that can influence government decisions and change things. Major incidents in which media (public opinion) intervention has had an impact include: the Shenyang Liu Xiang case; the Shenyang BMW collision case; the Hebei farmer-entrepreneur Sun Dawu's illegal financing case; the Hebei Langfang police's unlawful detention, murder, and burial of a corpse case; and the case of the collective unlawful demolition of a building and relocation of citizens' rights violated by the county party committee and the county government of Jiahe County in Hunan Province, to name just a few, which have changed some things through the media's (public opinion's) intervention. There have also been many revelations of responsible disasters and accidents, all of which were caused by the media and public scrutiny of public opinion. In the past, we have never found that China's public opinion from the civil society and the media have such a great power to change the government's behavior and laws.

Adjusting the Functions of the People's Congress and the Standing Committee

First, the legislative power of the Standing Committee will be further expanded. The National People's Congress no longer exercises legislative power, making the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress a full-fledged legislative body. As we know, because there are too many deputies to the NPC, the duration of each year's session is limited, and each session usually lasts ten days and a half months. And there are too many agenda items for each meeting, so if a draft law is to be considered at each meeting, usually only one day or half a day is allocated for discussion. It is not very serious and prudent to vote on a law that is a code of conduct for the people of the country in a meeting of nearly 3,000 people with only one day for discussion. It can be seen that it is quite inappropriate for a law to be considered and passed at a meeting as large as the National People's Congress. In order to allow the Congress to better conduct elections, listen to and scrutinize reports on its work, and have more time to review the budget, etc., it is recommended that the legislative agenda of the Congress be canceled and that the legislative power be left entirely in the hands of the Standing Committee. This will be more conducive to improving the quality of laws, as the Standing Committee will be more capable of scrutinizing laws, and its members will have more full-time members and experts in various fields, and will also have more time to scrutinize legal bills over and over again. In fact, laws now submitted for consideration by the House of Representatives are also first scrutinized by the Standing Committee, and the consideration of laws by the House of Representatives is, to a large extent, only a formality. Therefore, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress should be allowed to become a full-fledged legislature in name only. The Congress mainly exercises the power to organize the organs of the state.

Secondly, in order to make the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) a fully representative legislature, it is necessary to make corresponding reforms to the Standing Committee of the NPC, mainly to expand the representativeness of the Standing Committee of the NPC, and increase the quota of the members of the Standing Committee to about three to five hundred, so as to enable the legislature to represent the public opinion in a wider sense.

Thirdly, the specialization of the Standing Committee should be implemented. In order to make the Standing Committee a truly capable legislature, it must be specialized. Dedication includes dedicating members of the Standing Committee to the work of the Standing Committee, not taking on other duties, and equipping the members of the Standing Committee with offices and specialized assistants. When the Standing Committee is made full-time, its members will have sufficient time to investigate and study draft laws, and it will be possible to extend the duration of the Standing Committee's sessions so that it will have time to consider draft laws in plenary session and to discuss and adopt them by debating them article by article and proposing amendments to them, thereby improving the quality of the legislation. The addition of a number of full-time young members to the First Session of the Tenth National People's Congress is merely an experimental exploration of the specialization of the Standing Committee. However, only after all the members of the Standing Committee are professionalized can the overall effect occur.

(4) Strengthening the powers and functions of the people's congresses and their standing committees

It is necessary to make the various powers and functions of the people's congresses better realized through reform. Some people on the current work of the National People's Congress compiled a catchphrase is: "the enactment of other people have enacted the law, to decide people have decided the issue of appointment and dismissal of the organization has determined the personnel, supervise the leadership to let you supervise the issue. This situation must be changed, otherwise, there is a failure to meet the expectations of the people.

In terms of legislation, the legislative branch of the interests of the long-term plagued by the improvement of the quality of legislation. Legislation lacks "problem" awareness, legislative plans to avoid important legislation, specific legislation to avoid the main contradictions, legal provisions to avoid the measures to solve the problem. In many places, the supervision of the people's congresses avoids the important issues and is not effective. There is a ballad that says, "Singing praises in the deliberation report, praising more in the duty evaluation, going through the motions in the law enforcement inspection, and passing the inspection in one hearing, two looks and three passes." There is a satirical NPC Standing Committee inspection form of the jingle said: sitting in the car around, looking through the glass, the problem when hope to talk about, when leaving the shoulder to say "do a good job!" And the right to decide on important matters, people's congresses at all levels basically did not exercise or very little exercise.

To improve legislation and quality, it is fundamentally necessary to democratize legislation. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has taken a number of measures to improve the quality of legislation, such as the implementation of the "three-trial system" for legislation, the implementation of the unified consideration of legal bills, and strengthening the unified consideration and coordination of legislation. However, these measures are only stopgap measures. To improve the quality of legislation and eliminate sectoralization of legislation, the ultimate solution is to change the mechanism of the National People's Congress, so that people who truly represent the various interests of society can enter the legislature.

To make our people's congress a truly representative organ of the people and to realize the constitutional setup of people's sovereignty, it is absolutely necessary to carry out constant reforms and improvements. There is still a long way to go before its powers can be realized and its role brought into full play, and some of the reform proposals put forward here have been made only after realistic and full consideration of their feasibility. Although some of them are only very minor reforms, each step of reform will bring changes and vitality to the People's Congress. And the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.