FAQs: National People's Congress and Its Standing Committee - NPC Observer

The NPCSC’s legislative process can be broken down into four relatively distinct stages: planning, drafting, deliberations, as well as voting and promulgation.

Planning: The NPCSC uses five-year legislative plans as a blueprint for its legislative agenda during each term, a practice that dates back to the 1990s. The Legislative Affairs Commission (LAC) drafts those plans by soliciting proposals for legislative projects from a variety of sources and prioritizing those projects based on their urgency and the legislature’s available resources. The NPCSC also uses annual legislative plans to implement and, when necessary, supplement its five-year legislative plans, in light of, for instance, current events or the Party’s new directives.

Drafting: Each legislative project has a designated lead drafting organ, which is most often a State Council agency, an NPC special committee, or the LAC. While there is no single way to draft a bill, the drafting process, which could take years, invariably involves repeated solicitations of opinions from interested parties, including governmental bodies and private entities, and repeated revisions of the draft. After a bill is finalized and submitted to the NPCSC, the Council of Chairpersons will decide when to put it on the NPCSC’s agenda.

Deliberations: The default rule is that the NPCSC must review a bill three times—that is, at three different sessions—before voting on it. Each review (or session) has a similar structure. First, someone will explain the draft under review to the legislators. During the initial review, that person is usually a senior official of the drafting organ; during any subsequent review, that person is a member of the NPC Constitution and Law Committee (CLC). Then, NPCSC members will break into small groups to discuss the draft under review. Between NPCSC sessions, the LAC and the CLC will work together to solicit opinions on each draft from a variety of sources, including the public (if a public consultation is conducted, as now is the norm). They then, under a process known as “unified deliberations” [统一审议], revise each draft based on the opinions received, while considering the Party leadership’s views on relevant issues. After each round of unified deliberations, the CLC produces a new draft of the bill and an accompanying document explaining the main changes made. The final draft that will be voted on is called a “recommended voting version” [建议表决稿].

Voting and promulgation: A legislative bill requires a simple majority of all incumbent NPCSC members to pass. After the NPCSC votes to approve a bill, the President will sign a presidential order to formally announce its passage—a mere formality, as the President has no veto power. The full text of the bill is made public shortly thereafter, no later than the next morning.