Legislative work has been high on the work agenda of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, and its standing committee since the first plenary session of the 10th NPC in March 2003. The 2003 plenary session of the NPC outlined the legislative work of the five-year tenure of the 10th NPC, which was to establish a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics. It also emphasized that the key to legislative work over five years would be continually improving the quality of legislation. The blueprint drafted by the NPC Standing Committee listed 76 laws to be formulated, of which 59 would enter the deliberation stage and another 17 would be drafted based on thorough investigation.

Through the hard efforts of the last five years, the 10th NPC and its standing committee have fulfilled the 2003 legislation blueprint through conducting the fourth amendment to the Constitution in 2004 and formulating and revising a total of 64 laws. These projects have improved the construction of China's legal system in quantity and quality. So far, China has all the fundamental and major laws, consisting of seven areas of law, including the Constitution and related laws, civil and business law, administrative law, economic law, social law, criminal law and procedure law. The three layers of the legal framework are laws, administrative regulations and regional statutes, which have applied the rule of law to all aspects of political, economic, cultural and social life in China.

Over recent years, the legislative work of the 10th NPC and its standing committee has exhibited the following characters:

First, the legislative work has stuck to fully implementing the Scientific Outlook on Development and building a socialist harmonious society. Addressing a grand rally to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the NPC, Chinese President Hu Jintao said the law should reflect the balanced development of urban and rural areas, balanced development of different regions, balanced economic growth and social development, balanced harmonious development between human beings and nature and balanced domestic development and opening up. Moreover, the legislative work should be an impetus to building a socialist harmonious society.

Hu's speech put forward more concrete and scientific goals and requirements for China's legislative work. The ultimate goal directing legislation has shifted to scitific development. Other guidelines for legislative work, such as people-oriented legislation, social harmony, people's livelihood and rights were emphasized.

Secondly, in terms of content, legislative work has highlighted the synchronized progress in economic law, social law, civil and business and criminal law. This has been totally different from the long-time practice of centering on enacting economic laws, which has promoted the perfection of the legal system. The legislative work of the last five years has focused on social law. For example, the Employment Promotion Law, Labor Contract Law and Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes have been released in the last five years. Before the 10th NPC, social law accounted for only 2-6 percent of the total number of laws while economic law accounted for 40-60 percent. The proportion of social laws has been climbing steadily over the last five years, to nearly 20 percent of national laws. In some regions, social law now accounts for 30-40 percent of regional statutes, which reflects the requirements of a people-oriented and harmonious society.

Thirdly, the legislative process has introduced more public participation. Public participation in the legislative process has been institutionalized and standardized. For example, to collect public opinion on law drafts, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee has held hearings on Individual Income Tax Law and solicited opinions from experts and people of all walks of life on the Labor Contract Law, the Property Law and the Employment Promotion Law. The publicized draft of the Labor Contract Law received over 190,000 suggestions from the public, of which 65 percent came from the individual workers. Some of these suggestions came from the standing committees of people's congresses of many provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, departments of the Central Government, large enterprises, institutions of higher learning and non-governmental organizations.

In the deliberation of the Property Law, after the full text of the draft law was publicized, the NPC Standing Committee received over 10,000 suggestions, and held over 100 seminars and public hearings to collect opinions from different walks of life.

Within the month after the draft law of the Employment Promotion Law was publicized, the NPC Standing Committee received 11,020 suggestions, of which 70 percent came from the grassroots level.

Increasing public participation has been introduced into the planning, drafting and deliberation of laws. An increasing number of law drafts have been publicized to solicit public opinion and a rising amount of public opinion has been heard through channels such as public hearings. Public participation has increasingly become the standard practice for China's legislature.

Fourthly, principles of scientific legislation have been implemented. The practice of legislation has increasingly attached importance to respecting rules of social development and legislation, the opinions of scholars and experience of foreign countries in related laws. For example, the recycling economy law under legislation has become the role model in using legal and economic means to promote the formation and development of the recycling economy.

Fifthly, the quality of legislation has progressed considerably. Law drafts have been publicized to solicit suggestions from experts, lawyers, judges and other stakeholders so that laws reflect the will of the people. Legislative work has fully considered the real situation in China instead of copying procedures and models in Western countries, which has enhanced the feasibility of the new laws and enabled them to comply with China's situations and needs. While drafting and adopting new laws, revising old laws has increasingly become a predominant part of the legislature's work in recent years. Upgrading old laws to ensure their relevance to current society is also in line with the requirement of building a harmonious society through legislation. Over the last five years, revised laws have accounted for 54 percent of legislative projects of the NPC and its standing committee.

From the long-term development of legislation, the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics has taken shape and perfecting this system will be the major task of legislative work in China in the future. The perfection of the system will involve balancing responsibility and power as well as different interests, and the relocation of social resources. The improvement of standards for the legislative procedures, techniques, quality and evaluation indexes is also part of perfecting the system, which will focus on the improvement of the legal system and enhancing the feasibility and efficiency of laws and regulations. The 11th NPC will carefully review the implementation of the legislative blueprint of the 10th NPC in numbers and quality of laws drafted and revised and issue a legislative blueprint for the next five to 15 years so that legislative work can better guarantee the realization of strategic goals for building a well-off society in an all-around way put forward by the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

From the internal rules of the legislative process, legislative work in China will face challenges in the process of deepening reforms of political systems and legal systems. With the transition from a legislation-centered rule of law development model to a new development model featuring coordination between legislation and implementation of laws, more public participation and scientific approaches will be the main characteristics of future legislative work.

In terms of the structure of the legal system, the legislature will strike a balance between economic law and social law, public law and private law, domestic law and ratification of international treaties. The legislature faces a heavy workload of enacting new laws and revising, supplementing, interpreting and abolishing existing laws. This has replaced the lawmaking-centered old work model.

The author is Director of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences