Law amendment to help guarantee public participation in legislative affairs

Whole-process people's democracy has been highlighted in a draft law amendment, so as to ensure public opinions are heard in every step of legislative affairs.

The draft revision to the Legislation Law was submitted to a just-concluded session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, for its first review.

"A people-centered approach, with whole-process people's democracy, must be upheld and implemented in legislative activities, as it will play a big role in helping us learn new public demands and understand their ideas," said Shen Chunyao, director of the NPC Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission.

He made the remark when explaining the draft amendment to lawmakers during the session, which closed on Sunday.

"Human rights should be respected and protected, with social fairness and justice safeguarded in lawmaking," he said. "Grassroots stations for collecting legislative suggestions from all walks of life need to be further set up in light of reality.

"Amending the law will allow people to have orderly participation in legislative activities and to express their concerns, and it will be an institutional guarantee that legislation serves, relies on, benefits and protects the people," he added.

The concept of "whole-process people's democracy" was first advanced by President Xi Jinping during a visit to Shanghai in November 2019. It has since then been addressed by Xi, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, on many occasions.

In a central conference on work related to people's congresses in October last year, for example, Xi stressed promoting whole-process people's democracy that enables the Chinese people to be broadly involved in national governance.

Xi underlined the term again when he delivered a report to the 20th CPC National Congress, which was held in Beijing from Oct 16 to 22, emphasizing that all power of the state in China belongs to the people.

Xi said that whole-process people's democracy is the defining feature of socialist democracy, adding "it is democracy in its broadest, most genuine and most effective form".

It is a must to firmly stay on the path of socialist political advancement with Chinese characteristics, uphold the unity among the Party leadership, the running of the country by the people, and law-based governance, and to ensure the principal position of the people to give full expression to their will, protect their rights and interests, and spark their creativity, Xi said.

He stressed the guarantee of people's ability to engage in democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management and oversight in accordance with the law, and inspire their motivation, initiative and creativity to consolidate and develop a lively, stable and united political atmosphere.

In addition to highlighting whole-process people's democracy while revising the Legislation Law, Shen said that amending the law, which was adopted in 2000, is also a major measure to advance overall law-based governance and uphold the Constitution, and a practical demand to promote reforms by rule of law.

Regarding the process of lawmaking as brainstorming, he called for legislators to stand on the people's side to understand more about what they want and respect their innovation.

Over the past decade, the country's top legislature has stepped up efforts in developing democracy in legislative activities by various means.

For example, the NPC Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission began building grassroots legislation opinion collection stations in the country in July 2015, as an innovative move to gather legislative suggestions from residents and then resolve their problems through lawmaking.

The first batch of such stations was set up in Shanghai's Hongqiao subdistrict and in standing committees of local legislative bodies in Xiangyang, Hubei province; Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province; and Lintao county, Gansu province.

In August, Yang Heqing, an official from the commission, said at a news conference that 10 more such stations would be established soon to further implement whole-process people's democracy and overall law-based governance.

He said that the new stations would be mainly built in northeastern and western areas of China, as well as regions inhabited by ethnic groups, such as in Liaoning province and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

"Once those are built, there will be a station in every provincial region across the country," he added.

Lauding whole-process people's democracy as a separate chapter that was written into the report to the 20th CPC National Congress, Song Xiongwei, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told China News Service that it was a milestone, regarding it not only as a conclusion of the past years' achievements, but also a theoretical innovation in the new era.

He added that the country should continue developing and optimizing whole-process people's democracy to meet public demand as well as the central leadership's new requirements of advancing on the path to modernization.