Electoral Law revision key to equal rights

"To some extent, the different representation is unequal. But only such rules can show the true picture of the country and reflect the leading role of the working class," Deng Xiaoping, the then vice-premier, said in 1953.

Han also said the rule was "completely necessary" at that time because the rural population greatly outweighed the number of people in the cities. If such a rule was not in place, urban deputies would have been greatly outnumbered.

However, in 1995, with the population in cities growing enormously, the old ratio was narrowed to four rural residents for every urban resident.

And today, as the ratio of urban-to-rural residents has narrowed further, with experts expecting parity by 2015, Li said it is the moment to grant equal electoral rights to both groups.

"The change will provide an institutional guarantee for improving the people's congress system and advancing socialist democracy," he said.

However, experts mentioned that although the proposed amendment grants equal electoral rights to people across the country, it does not necessarily mean there would be the same number of farmer deputies as urban deputies in the NPC.

"The change will help increase the number of farmer deputies, but it will not necessarily result in parity," Chen Sixi, a NPC Standing Committee member, said.

He said as the election of people's congress deputies is based on household registered population, it is possible for a rural election district to elect a non-farmer deputy, as the candidates could be business people or workers who still have their household registered in the rural area, or even local villagers or town leaders.

"But this could be further improved in the future with the reform of China's household registration system," Chen said.