Special Report: NPC, CPPCC Annual Sessions 2007

    2. Work was completed on important legislation bearing on overall economic and social development, the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law and the revised Law on Compulsory Education were promulgated and implemented, and the draft Law on Corporate Income Tax has been submitted to this session for your deliberation and approval. Formulating the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law to set up a legal framework for orderly closing down enterprises so that enterprises that perform well can thrive and enterprises that don't can fall by the wayside was an objective requirement for the development of the socialist market economy. The Standing Committee placed great importance on formulating and passing a law on enterprise bankruptcies. It formulated a law on the bankruptcy of state-owned enterprises in 1986, but it was always difficult to implement due to failure to solve the problem of funding to take care of the employees of bankrupted enterprises. The old law on enterprise bankruptcy could no longer meet practical needs as the socialist market economy developed, the reform of state-owned enterprises was deepened and the non-public sector of the economy developed. We urgently needed to formulate a new bankruptcy law that would apply to all enterprises and would be strongly operational. On the basis of a careful review of the legislative work of the past two Standing Committees, the current Standing Committee conducted thorough surveys and studies, widely solicited opinions, once again formulated the draft Enterprise Bankruptcy Law and finally passed it after deliberating it three times. The Enterprise Bankruptcy Law contains special provisions to require giving priority to paying unpaid wages and contributions for social security due from bankrupt enterprises, and also contains provisions to standardize enterprise bankruptcy procedures and protect the legitimate rights of enterprise employees.

    Children are the future of the motherland and the hope of the people. Their healthy development is not only of the greatest concern for hundreds of millions of families but is also a basic guarantee for continued burgeoning progress in China's socialist modernization. The Standing Committee completely revised the Law on Compulsory Education and the Law on the Protection of Minors to address serious problems in compulsory education and the protection of minors.

    In revising the Law on Compulsory Education, we mainly clarified three areas:

    First, we established the legal framework for a mechanism to ensure funding for compulsory education, made it clear that students will no longer be charged for tuition and miscellaneous fees for compulsory education, and left it to the State Council to determine the steps to implement these provisions.

    Second, we set out the requirement that development of compulsory education should make the distribution of compulsory education more uniform and that governments at all levels must appropriately distribute education resources.

    Third, we incorporated the requirement for competence-oriented education into the law and further clarified the principles and goals for compulsory education.

    The revised Law on Compulsory Education more fully embodies the principle of fairness in education, which is of major significance for ensuring the sound development of compulsory education in China.

    The revised Law on the Protection of Minors further clarifies the responsibility of families, schools, society and the state in the protection of minors and highlights the right of minors to receive an education, and it will play a major role in ensuring the physical and mental health of minors and protecting their legitimate rights.

    Since the policy of reform and opening up was first instituted, farmers have founded hundreds of thousands of specialized cooperative economic organizations, but their legal status has never been clear. The Standing Committee formulated the Law on Specialized Farmer Cooperatives based on extensive surveys and studies, for the first time confirming in a law their status in the market and standardizing their property system and means of distribution. This has great significance for upholding and improving the basic rural operating system, improving the degree of organization among farmers and promoting industrialization of agriculture.

    We formulated the Law to Combat Money Laundering on the basis of extensive surveys and studies and a review of actual experience in order to meet the requirements of the fight against money laundering in China and relevant international treaties. The Standing Committee revised the Partnership Enterprise Law to encourage independent innovation and risk investment, strengthen the integration of technology and capital and promote the growth of professional service organizations. The revised Banking Oversight and Management Law gives agencies responsible for overseeing the banking industry the power to carry out investigations and contains provisions stipulating the conditions and procedures for them to carry out such investigations and relevant legal obligations to strengthen oversight and management of the banking industry. The Decision on Revision of the Organic Law of the People's Courts requires that the clause that authorizes higher people's courts to rule on some cases carrying the death penalty be deleted, reserving that power for the Supreme People's Court alone. This will have a major role in ensuring fairness in the judicial system.

    The Law on Corporate Income Tax is an important law that affects overall economic and social development. The objective for reform to introduce a unified tax code for enterprises was clearly defined at the Third Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee. Over 540 of you have submitted 16 bills on formulating a unified law on corporate income tax since the Second Session of the Tenth NPC. The current Standing Committee included formulation of the Law on Corporate Income Tax in the five-year plan for legislation and called on the relevant departments of the State Council to work hard on its formulation. The State Council submitted the proposed draft Law on Corporate Income Tax to the Standing Committee after conducting thorough surveys and studies and extensively soliciting opinions. There were three main changes incorporated in the draft: The first was to unify the income tax rate for domestic and foreign enterprises and standardize the deductible amount. The second was to set a lower tax rate and institute a preferential treatment policy for small enterprises and new- and high-technology enterprises. The third was to adopt a transition measure for enterprises that formerly enjoyed preferential tax status and make appropriate arrangements for special economic zones and the western region. The draft was conscientiously deliberated and revised at the Twenty-fifth Meeting of the Standing Committee, and the decision was made at the same meeting to submit it to this session for your deliberation and approval.

    Formulation of the Law on Property Rights and the Law on Corporate Income Tax were two major events in China's legislative work and are two important items on the agenda for this session. Because of the wide concern in society as well as among you about these two laws, when we submitted the drafts of these laws and related documents to you for your deliberation and comments in January, we also organized the leaders of relevant organizations to report to you in different localities on their contents to prepare for deliberation at this session. The Standing Committee and the State Council revised these two proposed laws based on your opinions and the comments members of the Standing Committee made during deliberation and explained the two draft laws to this session. Thanks to your concerted efforts, we are confident that we can successfully formulate these two laws.

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