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.