China's top legislature records 889 normative documents for review in 2017

BEIJING -- China's top legislature received and put on records 889 normative documents for review this year, according to a government report.

Local laws and regulations made up the majority of the documents, with 358 at the provincial level and 444 municipal, as of early December.

A total of 4,778 normative documents were recorded since March 2013, including 60 administrative laws and regulations.

Shen Chunyao, chairman of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, delivered the report Sunday at the bi-monthly session of the NPC Standing Committee, which runs until Wednesday.

Since March 2013, the legislative affairs commission has carried out a number of reviews of "astounding regulations" in certain regions that breached the law and damaged its sanctity, as well as of certain regulations on nature reserves that contradicted higher laws.

So far, a total of 35 such local laws and regulations have been amended or abolished, with another 680 on the agenda, the report said.

The commission also carried out reviews based on the requests from citizens and organizations, with a total of 1,527 received since March 2013.

This year saw the most of the requests with 1,084, while 1,116 of the requests are for the reviews of judicial interpretations, according to the report.

Recording and reviewing normative documents including administrative and local laws and regulations, as well as judicial interpretations is a significant duty of the NPC Standing Committee, which has the power to nullify documents that contradict the Constitution and law, according to the Constitution.

Recording the documents is the premise of the reviews, and doing so in time is "a display of the document makers' awareness of being supervised," according to the report.

The report pointed out a few shortcomings of the current recording and reviewing work, such as the lack of awareness of the work's importance, and the obscurity of the range of the documents that should be recorded, which has resulted in the neglect of some.

The standard, procedure and correction mechanism of the reviews are yet to be clarified, limiting the binding force of the system, and failing to make sure that all the recorded documents are reviewed, and all the errors rectified.

The report went on to list the major tasks the NPC should focus on, including building a better team on record and review work, and accelerating the construction of a nationwide information platform for the work.

Improving theoretical research and enhancing guidance to local people's congresses are also on the list.

The report is scheduled for further discussion on Tuesday morning, according to the agenda of the session.