Public will have more opportunity to share legislative opinions

China will set up 10 new stations for the collection of legislative opinions from grassroots areas in a bid to further implement the nation's "whole-process people's democracy" concept and promote overall law-based governance, an official from the country's top legislature said.

The new "grassroots legislation opinion collection stations" will be mainly established in the northeastern and western areas of China, as well as regions inhabited by ethnic groups, Yang Heqing, spokesman for the National People's Congress Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission, told a news conference on Friday.

The new stations include the Standing Committee of the People's Congress in Hunchun, Jilin province, and the Standing Committee of the People's Congress in Luoping county, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, he said.

Once the effort is complete, "another 10 stations where the public can give advice and ideas directly to legislators will be established," he said, adding that once those are built, there will be a station in every provincial region across the country.

The establishment of such stations was part of an initiative launched by the commission in July 2015 to gather suggestions from residents and then resolve their problems through legislation.

The first stations were built in Shanghai's Hongqiao subdistrict and in Xiangyang, Hubei province; Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province; and Lintao county, Gansu province, as part of the standing committees of their respective local legislatures. The success of these stations led the commission to build more in 2020 and 2021.

Yang said that such stations have played a key role in the implementation of "whole-process people's democracy", "as they provide a channel for people at the grassroots to share their ideas on legislative affairs and have a greater opportunity to get their voices heard by national lawmakers."

President Xi Jinping first advanced the concept of "whole-process democracy" during a visit to Hongqiao in November 2019.

"With the stations, we'll increase exchanges between residents and legislators to improve the quality of lawmaking, contributing more to 'whole-process people's democracy' and the overall law-based governance in the new era," Yang said.

According to Yang, the NPC and its standing committee have made 69 laws and 237 amendments since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012.

Over the past decade, "we have focused more on making and revising laws on national security, healthcare, environment, education and technology," he said, adding that the Constitution has also been upheld during the period.