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NPC moves on laws pushing social reform
12/3/2007 9:32

China's National People's Congress will increase legislative efforts to enhance social programs, the country's top lawmaker said yesterday.

"While continuing work to improve economic legislation, we must also concentrate on strengthening legislation related to social programs to provide a solid legal foundation for building a harmonious socialist society and to ensure attainment of the legislative goal of the 10th NPC," said Wu Bangguo, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Wu's remarks came as he delivered the legislative plan for 2007 at this year's annual legislative session.

The agenda includes enacting laws on labor contracts, employment promotion, social security, mediation and arbitration of labor disputes, emergency response, urban and rural planning, state-owned assets, combating illegal drugs and other illegal activities.

"We have noticed that a large proportion of the laws to be considered in 2007 target social affairs," said Fu Yonglin, an NPC deputy from Sichuan Province.

For example, the draft employment promotion law, which was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee in February, prohibits discrimination against job seekers on the basis of ethnicity, race, gender, religious beliefs, age or physical disabilities. In addition, governments above county level are required to establish early warning systems to address potential largescale unemployment.

The law is urgently needed as the employment outlook is not optimistic, Fu said.

Wu said in his report that the current NPC will achieve the goal of "basically establishing a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics" and improving the quality of legislation before the current five-year legislative tenure ends next March.

China is in a critical period of reform and development, and the citizenry's thinking is changing profoundly, he said.

"These unprecedented social changes provide very strong vitality for China's development, but they inevitably create a wide variety of conflicts and problems as well," Wu said.

In addition to the social program laws, two of the chief economic proposals this year will deal with property and corporate income taxes.

The property law is fundamental for standardizing property relations and will play a supporting role in "the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics," Wu said.

Also up for deliberation is a draft corporate income tax law that proposes a 25 percent unified tax rate for domestic and overseas-funded enterprises.

The law is designed to establish a standardized enterprise income tax system and an environment for fair competition. At present, foreign companies are taxed at 15 percent while Chinese firms pay 25 percent on average.

"The rate of 25 percent set in the draft is relatively low on a world scale and will be conducive to enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises and attracting foreign investment," Minister of Finance Jin Renqing told lawmakers last week.



 Xinhua news