China issues white paper on right to development

IV. Enhancing Political Development

China continues to enrich and improve a political system suited to its own development by advancing Chinese socialist democracy and rule of law in an all-round way, ensuring effective protection of civil and political rights, and raising the levels of participation in and promotion of the political development process and allowing people to partake in the benefits of political development.

The people's congress system is the fundamental institutional guarantee of political development for the people. According to the Constitution, all power in the PRC belongs to the people, and the National People's Congress (NPC) and the local people's congresses at various levels are the organs through which the people exercise state power. The people's congress system guarantees citizens' rights to participate in development and share the resulting benefits in five ways:

(1) Generating and supervising state organs involved in the implementation of the right to development. Paragraph 3 of Article 3 of the Constitution states that all administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the state are created by the people's congresses to which they are responsible and under whose supervision they operate.

(2) Formulating laws and regulations to foster development. By September 2016, the NPC and its Standing Committee had formulated the Constitution and 252 laws in effect. By July 2016, local people's congresses and their standing committees with legislative power had formulated 9,915 local regulations in effect.

(3) Examining and approving development policy initiatives. Article 62 of the Constitution stipulates that the NPC exercises the functions and powers to examine and approve the plan for national economic and social development and the report on its implementation, and to examine and approve the state budget and the report on its implementation, among others.

(4) Providing an open mechanism for the expression of public opinion. People express and claim their reasonable development interests by means such as the exercise of their rights to raise opinions, suggestions and criticism, to file appeals and complaints, and to supervise.

(5) Properly defining the relationship between public power and development interests.

In recent years China has introduced three major systems that are of relevance－the power list, negative list, and responsibility list. Since 2013 the State Council has published lists enumerating all matters subject to administrative approval by its departments, and prohibited the addition of any unlisted matters, with 618 matters canceled or delegated to lower authorities. In this way, the State Council endeavors to eliminate opportunities for exploiting public posts for profit, and to enhance the procedures for the exercise of power.

Democratic election is an important element of citizens' political rights. Since the policy of reform and opening up was introduced in 1978, great progress has been made toward establishing people's democracy and an equal right to vote. In 2010, the NPC adopted an amendment to the Electoral Law providing wider equality of voting rights. Among other measures it requires that deputies be elected to the people's congresses based on the same population ratio in urban and rural areas. Between 2011 and 2012, the election of deputies to county-level people's congresses saw more than 981 million registered voters and a turnout rate of 90.24 percent; the election of deputies to township-level people's congresses recorded more than 723 million registered voters and a turnout rate of 90.55 percent. In these elections, measures were taken based on the conditions in each constituency to ensure the right to vote of the 200 million floating population, and to facilitate their voting. The basic principle was that voters cast their votes in the constituencies where their registered permanent residences are, while they may vote by proxy with a letter of entrustment, and voters who have their voter qualification certificates in the constituencies where their registered permanent residences are may vote in the constituencies where they currently live.

The 2,987 deputies elected in 2013 to the Third Session of the 12th NPC included 401 workers and farmers accounting for 13.42 percent, 699 women accounting for 23.4 percent, and 409 deputies from all the 55 ethnic minority groups of China accounting for 13.69 percent.

Consultative democracy is an important channel for orderly participation in the political process. An extensive, multi-layered, institutionalized system of consultative democracy inclusive of multiple parties, people's congresses, governments, people's organizations, the grassroots, and non-governmental organizations has been created to expand orderly participation in the political process and ensure the citizen's right to development.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is an essential organ for implementing consultative democracy, involving the participation of nine political parties including the CPC, eight people's organizations, 56 ethnic groups, five major religions and 34 sectors of society. The CPPCC has more than 3,000 committees and over 600,000 members at all levels. In 2015, the CPPCC organized 41 major consultation events, and 107 inspection and survey tours, forming a political consultation framework employing a range of options such as plenary sessions, standing committees' thematic discussions on administrative affairs and thematic consultative seminars, and biweekly consultative seminars.

In the Third Session of the 12th CPPCC convened in 2015, 87.5 percent or 1,948 of the CPPCC members submitted 5,857 proposals, of which 85.1 percent or 4,984 were taken up for consideration. Since the First Session of the 12th CPPCC held in 2013, the rates of proposal handling and response have reached 99.5 percent or above.

Regional ethnic autonomy is an important channel for ethnic minorities to exercise their political rights. China has created the system of regional ethnic autonomy under the unitary system of government to effectively protect the democratic rights of ethnic minorities. Of the 55 ethnic minority groups in China, 44 have established ethnic autonomous areas. 71 percent of the ethnic minorities exercise regional autonomy, and the land area under ethnic autonomous areas accounts for 64 percent of the national territory. By the end of July 2016 ethnic autonomous areas had formulated and amended 967 autonomous regulations and separate regulations in effect, solidifying the legal foundation for ethnic minorities' exercise of their right to development.

Heads of governments of the five autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures and 120 autonomous counties are citizens from ethnic groups exercising regional autonomy. Leaderships and functional departments of CPC committees, people's congresses, governments, CPPCC committees at all levels in ethnic autonomous areas contain ethnic minorities, whose proportions are generally close to or higher than the percentages of ethnic minorities in the local population. By the end of 2015 ethnic minority civil servants numbered 765,000－nearly four times the figure in 1978－and 10.7 percent of the total number of civil servants across the country. 8.3 percent of civil servants at or above county level were ethnic minorities.

Grassroots democracy is an effective way for people to safeguard and realize equal right to development. China has established a system of grassroots self-governance implemented by rural villagers' committees and urban neighborhood committees. Approximately 98 percent of the 581,000 villagers' committees across the country practice direct election and have formulated village regulations and rules for villagers' self-governance. The turnout rates of direct elections average 95 percent among 600 million eligible voters. The 100,000 urban neighborhood committees in China utilize the services of 512,000 staff and 5.4 million volunteers. Urban residents' participation in democracy has been remarkably broadened and their self-governance capabilities and levels have been improved, through multiple channels, including direct elections, gridded management platforms, volunteer services, hearings, coordination meetings, appraisal meetings, community liaison, communities' online forums, and community public concern stations, all contributing to China's system of grassroots self-governance. The workers' congress system has been widely applied in enterprises and public institutions. 4.64 million or 88.6 percent of enterprises and public institutions with trade unions have established separate systems for publicizing enterprise affairs. There are 2.75 million grassroots trade unions across the country, with 280 million members, including 109 million migrant workers from rural areas.

By June 2016, non-governmental organizations that had registered at offices of civil affairs numbered 670,000, including 329,000 mass organizations, 5,028 foundations, and 336,000 private non-profit units. These non-governmental organizations' services and influence extend to education, science and technology, culture, health, sports, communities, environmental protection, public welfare, charity, rural economy and other fields of public life.

Public participation provides citizens with ready access to decision-making processes. China has furthered democratic legislation and improved the channels and forms of public participation in legislation. Efforts have also been made to establish a system of commissioning third parties to draft legislation and evaluate the drafts, and improve the mechanisms for soliciting public opinion on drafts of laws and regulations and giving feedback on responses. Some local authorities have adopted regulations on administrative decision-making procedures for major issues, which list public participation as an important legal procedure and define the forms and methods of public participation in administrative decision-making. Open solicitation of public opinion, hearings, seminars and questionnaires are widely applied for this purpose.

In 2007 the State Council enacted Regulations on Open Government Information, emphasizing open information concerning administrative approval, financial budgets and final accounts, government-subsidized housing for the poor, food and drug safety, land appropriation, and household demolition and resettlement. The Regulations provide for prompt and accurate disclosure of government information to the public and protection of their right to know, and ensure effective scrutiny over government work while enhancing transparency in government information and efficiency in law-enforcement.

Channels of public participation in judicial processes have been steadily broadened. The number of people's assessors has now surpassed 220,000. From 2003 when China piloted the people's supervisor mechanism to April 2016, there were more than 48,000 people's supervisors, who had exercised supervision over 49,000 cases of job-related crimes. By the end of 2015, there had been nearly 800,000 people's mediation committees with more than 3.9 million people's mediators, who had, in recent eight years, investigated and resolved more than 67 million cases of disputes. Public complaint filing has taken on more diversified forms, further broadening the channels for public political participation. The national complaint filing system has opened to the public for online complaint filing, resolution, and result appraisal through computers, mobile phones and the social-media app WeChat's public accounts platform. A total of 1.41 million cases were filed online in 2015, of which 140,000 were aimed at offering suggestions.