Special Report: NPC, CPPCC Annual Sessions 2007

    Fellow Deputies,

    Ever since this NPC was elected, you have been carrying the great trust of the people of all our ethnic groups, maintaining a high sense of responsibility toward the Party, the country and the people, and working conscientiously and wholeheartedly to fulfill your duties. You deliberated and approved bills, were active in submitting bills and proposals, enthusiastically participated in activities of the Standing Committee and strongly supported its work, thus making important contributions to efforts to improve the work of the NPC, uphold and improve the system of people's congresses, build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and create a harmonious socialist society.

    Under the leadership of their respective Party committees, local people's congresses at all levels and their standing committees performed their duties in accordance with the law and made outstanding achievements in all their work. In addition, they did a great deal to assist the Standing Committee in carrying out inspections of compliance with the law and investigations related to legislation and in effectively serving you and carrying out foreign exchange work, as well as made important contributions to joint efforts to improve socialist democracy and the socialist legal system.

    The special committees of the NPC attached great importance to self-improvement efforts, took full advantage of the skills, rich experience and other traits and strengths of their members, thoroughly studied issues, supported each other, coordinated their actions, worked hard and played an important role in improving the quality of the work of the NPC and its Standing Committee.

    Fellow Deputies,

    Under the leadership of the Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary, the Standing Committee made further advances in all fields of endeavor. These achievements were the result of your hard work and that of members of the Standing Committee, special committees and organs of the NPC, aided by the close cooperation of the State Council, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the strong support of local people's congresses at all levels and their standing committees and the general public. On behalf of the Standing Committee, I would now like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all of you who contributed to this success.

    In reviewing the work of the Standing Committee of the past year, we can clearly see that there are still some shortcomings. Better coordination is needed in some important issues in legislative work, oversight work needs to be made more focused and effective, the quality of the handling of deputy bills and proposals needs to be further improved, and the means and mechanisms for doing work related to you need to be further improved. We must pay close attention to these problems and adopt effective measures to address them.

    Major Tasks for This Year

    The current NPC, together with its Standing Committee, will complete its term of office in 2007. The Seventeenth National Congress of the Party will be held this year, and our many tasks for the year will be arduous. The general requirements for the work of the Standing Committee are as follows: We must take Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of Three Represents as our guide, fully put into practice the Scientific Outlook on Development and diligently follow the guiding principles set out at the Sixteenth National Congress of the Party and at the third through sixth plenary sessions of the Sixteenth Central Committee. We must uphold the organic unity of the leadership of the Party, the position of the people as masters of the country and the running of the government according to the rule of law, uphold and improve the system of people's congresses, focus on the overall work of the Party and the government in carrying out our duties, strive to meet the objectives of all tasks of the current NPC and continue to contribute to building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and creating a harmonious socialist society. To satisfy these requirements, we must work even harder and build on the foundation of our work of the last four years to do honor to our mission and successfully complete all our work for this year.

    I. We will strengthen social legislation and ensure that the goals for legislation are met.

    The current NPC and its Standing Committee set as its goal for legislation to basically complete establishment of a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics, focusing on improving the quality of legislation, and formulated a five-year legislation program to meet that goal. Over the last four years we passed amendments to the Constitution, promulgated and implemented the Anti-Secession Law, and formulated or revised 70 laws and made interpretations of or legal decisions concerning legal issues, resulting in the completion of a number of legislative items that were fundamental in nature, were urgently needed and for which conditions were ripe, thereby making very good progress in legislative work. At its Sixth Plenary Session the Sixteenth Central Committee clearly called for improving legislation to develop democratic politics, guarantee the rights of citizens, promote social programs, strengthen the social safety net, standardize people's organizations and improve public administration. This made new demands on the NPC's legislative work. While continuing work to improve economic legislation, we must also concentrate on strengthening legislation related to social programs to provide powerful legal guarantees for the building of a harmonious socialist society and to ensure attainment of the legislative goal of the current NPC.

    The main legislative tasks we plan to accomplish this year include enactment of the Law on Labor Contracts, the Employment Promotion Law, the Social Security Law, the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes, the Law on Administrative Decrees, the Law on Response to Emergencies, the Antitrust Law, the Law on State-Owned Assets, the Law to Combat Illegal Drugs, the Law to Curb Illegal Activities, the Law on Urban and Rural Planning, and the Circular Economy Law, as well as revision to the Law on Scientific and Technological Progress, the Civil Procedure Law, the Criminal Procedure Law, the Law on Food Hygiene, the Law on Energy Conservation and the Law on Attorneys. All concerned organizations should take into consideration the requirements of the assigned tasks, their responsibilities, time constraints and organization in carrying out these legislative projects, promptly work out ways to address major issues and ensure that bills are submitted for deliberation on schedule. The Standing Committee will strengthen organizational leadership, give full play to the role of the NPC special committees, strictly control legislation quality and ensure smooth progress in legislative work. It will also urge concerned organizations to promptly draw up supporting regulations for existing laws that require them and try to ensure that they are drawn up when bills are being formulated or deliberated so that they can be introduced soon after a bill becomes law. Preparations should be made for the five-year plan for legislation of the next NPC.

    Making sure that legislative work is carried out in a scientific and democratic manner is an internal requirement for raising legislation quality, so we must satisfy this requirement throughout the legislation process. In addition to soliciting written opinions on bills, we will conduct special research projects and hold forums and debates to directly solicit your opinions and those from all sectors of society. We will publish the entire texts of bills that have a bearing on the vital interests of the people in order to obtain a wide range of opinions. We will hold debates and hearings to carry out in-depth deliberations for highly technical or controversial bills. We will solicit opinions as extensively as possible so that the laws we enact fully express the common wishes of the people and thus ensure that they can be fully implemented.

    China is now in a critical period for reform and development, in which China's economic system and social structure, the interests of different sectors of society and people's thinking and concepts are all changing profoundly. 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. We must always adhere to the correct political orientation, put people first, proceed from China's actual conditions and realities and follow the mass line in legislative work. We must have a good understanding of the objective laws governing reform, opening up and socialist modernization, obtain a deep understanding of the characteristics of the current stage of China's economic and social development, and give due consideration to the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people, the current common interests of the people and the special interests of different groups in society. We need to concentrate on passing legislation urgently needed to solve practical problems in daily life. We need to strike a balance between stability of the law and the need to adapt to changes and make sure that laws are both progressive and practicable so that the law can fully play its proper role in standardizing and guiding the functioning of society and guaranteeing success in building a harmonious socialist society.

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