Drafting of the property law started in 1993. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has attached great importance to the enactment of the law. In December 2002, the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress included the property law in the draft civil code for preliminary deliberation. The current Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has included the enactment of the property law in the agenda of important subjects and devoted a lot of time and energies to the work. In order to make a success of the job, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has been adhering to the principle of democratic and scientific legislation. In July 2005, it published the draft property law and collected over 10,000 comments and suggestions from the people. Moreover, it held over 100 forums and a number of demonstration meetings, and conducted investigation and study on special subjects in some places, thus fully soliciting the views expressed by people from different quarters, deputies to the National People's Congress, people at the grass-roots level, specialists and scholars, and people from the central departments concerned. In the process, a lot of comments and suggestions were put forward. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has attached great importance to the opinions expressed and deliberated the draft on six occasions, which is something unprecedented in the history of legislation in China.

The general principles for enacting the property law are: with Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thought of "Three Represents" as the guidance, materializing the scientific concept on development in an all-round way, keeping to the correct political orientation and giving a full and accurate expression to and upholding the basic socialist economic system on the basis of the specific conditions and realities of our country; applying the principle of equal protection to the property of the State, the collective and the individual in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and laws and, at the same time, strengthening the protection of state-owned property against the loss of such property; giving a full and accurate expression to the basic policies of the Party in the rural areas at the present stage and safeguarding the interests of the large numbers of farmers; and in view of the problems in real life that need urgent regulation, conducting overall coordination of all kinds of interests and relationships, in order to promote social harmony. In short, in formulating the property law, we must, from beginning to end, keep to the correct political orientation and the Chinese characteristics of the property law and persist in proceeding from the realities in all aspects.

On the basis of the principles mentioned above and thanks to the rational comments and suggestions expressed by all quarters and to repeated discussion and revision of the draft, the final draft embodies greater changes compared with the initial one. When the component members of the Standing Committee deliberated the draft at the 25th Meeting of the current Standing Committee of the NPC, they highly valued and fully affirmed the draft, believing that the draft embodied the unity of the Party's position and the will of the people, represented a crystallization of the wisdom of the collective, and was about to be mature. The decision on submitting the draft to the Fifth Session of the Tenth National People's Congress for deliberation was adopted by an overwhelming majority vote. After the Meeting, the General Office of the Standing Committee delivered the draft property law to the deputies to the National People's Congress according the statutory procedure on last January 12 and made arrangements for them to study and discuss the draft in preparation for deliberation. Further amendment to the draft was made on the basis of the suggestions made by some deputies during discussion, hence the present draft submitted to the Session for the deliberation. The draft is composed of five parts, with 247 articles under 19 chapters.

3. The Main Contents of the Draft Property Law

(1) Adherence to the Basic Socialist Economic System.