Although a threshold for income tax may reflect nothing more than the result of a compromise among different interest groups in a heterogeneous country such as China, 1,600 yuan turned out to be quite satisfactory in reflecting the opinion of the majority in society.

According to a survey by the Social Survey Institute of China of 1,000 people in 10 cities three days after the new law was released, 77 percent of respondents supported the new threshold and 57 percent agreed that future legislation should adopt the procedure of holding public hearings.

"The legislative hearing is a major exploration of China's scientific and democratic legislation venture as well as a symbol that China's democratic legislation has entered a new development stage," said an editorial in Study Times, the official newspaper of the Central Party School of China's Communist Party. It said the legislative hearing system also provides the populace with effective training in how to practice democracy.

Given the opportunity, the Chinese public's enthusiasm for participating in creating a new law that concerns their daily lives could be brought into full play. Within one month after the first draft of the Labor Contract Law was released to the public in March, more than 190,000 suggestions were collected. The number of public suggestions exceeded those for every previous law except China's first Constitution adopted in 1954.

"Wide solicitation of public opinion in a transparent drafting process will guarantee better conformity after the law is adopted," said Wan Baogang, an assistant lawyer at the Beijing Dadi Law Firm. Wan also emphasized the efficiency of China's legislature and said lawmakers should accelerate the legislative process, which has been on a normal track only since China adopted its reform and opening-up policies in the late 1970s.

"China's legislation of commercial laws has been in full swing since the confirmation of the market economy in the early 1990s, but right now the current legal system still falls behind China's economic practices," said Xu Maokui, a professor at Renmin University of China and an expert in comparative studies of corporate governance laws.

As a lawyer, Wan often represents Japanese companies investing in China that are involved in business conflicts. He said China lags far behind Japan in the completeness of its civil and commercial law. He said his Japanese clients often take it for granted that their situation can be easily solved by referring to the law, only to find that there is no relevant commercial law or that such a law fails to carry specific regulations for a particular situation in China.

Under such circumstances, the government's ratification has to be solicited as a final verdict, which harms the independence of legislative power from administrative power. "While governments at all levels are dedicated to improving the investment environment to attract more capital inflows, I believe an important prerequisite is a perfect and complete legal system," said Wan.

He disagrees with Gong Xiantian's opinion that the deliberation of the property rights law should be extended. Wan studied for his master's degree at the law school of Shandong University, whose dean, Professor Liang Huixing, also headed the property rights law drafting team. Wan said it is rather incomprehensible that every law student in China like himself has been studying a central course on property rights law without such a law being in place in the country. In Wan's daily work, the lack of a property rights law has occasionally meant that he did not have the means to solve practical problems.

"While Japan promulgated its civil code over a century ago, China is still studying and formulating its civil code, but I hope the day is not far off when China catches up with Japan," Wan said.