NPC Plenary & HK Electoral Changes
Page 1: The lead story in PD today is about the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress convening its second plenary meeting on Monday. As an aside, there are so many mentions of Xi Jinping in this story. Anyway, Li Zhanshu pointed out the key aspects of the NPCSC’s work going ahead. The full summary of his comments are on Page 2.
He said that going forward NPCSC was to work to strengthen the implementation and supervision of the Constitution and maintain the unity of the rule of law in the country. His examples for this were the revision of the National Flag Law and the National Emblem Law, and the passing of the Hong Kong National Security Law.
Second, he said that the focus was on the “overall situation of the work of the party and the country, conform to the expectations of the people, and strengthen legislation in key areas.” These include public health legislation, national security legislation, and promoting high-quality development.
The third is to provide legislative support for supervision.
Fourth is creating frameworks for supporting the work of NPC deputies.
Fifth is to “serve the overall situation of the country’s diplomacy and give play to the functions of the National People’s Congress in its foreign affairs work.”
Also, Zhou Qiang, President of the Supreme People’s Court, presented a report. It says that “the Supreme People’s Court accepted 39,347 cases and concluded 35,773; local people’s courts and special people’s courts accepted 30.805 million cases, concluded and closed 28.705 million cases.” Zhou’s full work report summary is on Page 3.
In addition, Zhou says that the main tasks for 2020 include the following seven aspects.
resolutely safeguard national security and social stability;
actively serve high-quality development;
earnestly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the people;
promote dispute resolution and litigation service mechanism;
focus on deepening the reform of the judicial system;
forge a loyal, clean and responsible court team;
consciously accept supervision.
Meanwhile, Chief Procurator of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate Zhang Jun said that “in the past year, prosecutors across the country handled 3.01 million cases of various types, a year-on-year decrease of 19.4%.” Full work report summary is on Page 3.
Next, there’s a report on building on priorities under the 14th FYP under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought. I mention the latter bit because it’s basically splattered everywhere. Anyway, this one has comments from an interesting set of people, which tells you about how corporate interests are represented in the Party. So you have Party officials at different levels commenting about the future along with deputies from the private sector. For instance, you have Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, talking about participating in “promoting rural revitalization in an all-round way.” Then you have Zhou Yunjie, vice chairman of the board of directors of Haier Group Corporation, saying that China must now enhance “innovation capabilities, realize the organic integration of the Industrial Internet and the Consumer Internet, and promote high-quality development.”
Page 4: A report about foreigners being optimistic about China’s development. Next, a report about international media’s positive coverage of China’s vaccine diplomacy. It begins by saying that “at present, China has provided free vaccine assistance to 69 developing countries in urgent need, and exports vaccines to 43 countries at the same time.” There are minor selected bits from Financial Times and WSJ, along with Egyptian Today and a Malaysian daily. Of course, Sinovac’s vaccine is also caught up in a controversy in HK, with a couple of people with underlying conditions ending up in the ICU after taking the Sinovac jab.
Finally, there was a discussion on March 5 at the UNHRC titled, “Multilateralism and Human Rights Development: Human Rights Cooperation and Achievements between China and the Belt and Road Countries.” PD says that “more than 20 domestic Foreign scholars conducted in-depth discussions on issues such as China's active promotion of the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative and global solidarity to fight the epidemic and protect human rights.”
Page 5: A report on the plenary meeting of the Constitution and Law Committee of the National People’s Congress. It says that they discussed the draft decision on HK’s election system. In addition, changes to the NPC Organic Law and the NPC Rules of Procedure were also discussed. There’s a bit about what these are:
“the NPC Organization Law and the NPC Rules of Procedure are the institutional guarantee for the NPC and its Standing Committee to exercise their powers in accordance with the law, are important constitutional laws, and are the legislative implementation of relevant provisions of the Constitution.”
The specific amendments being discussed are not really spelt out. Here’s the clearest bit from the story: “The members of the Constitution and Law Committee generally believe that the draft amendments to the NPC Organic Law and the NPC Rules of Procedure regard adherence to the party’s leadership as the primary principle of the work of the people’s congress, and summarize and absorb the experience and practices of the development of the people’s congress system and the work practices of the people’s congress.”
On changes to HK’s electoral system, the piece says that the committee basically provided a stamp of legal approval on what the political leadership wants to do. “the members of the Constitutional and Law Committee are unanimously in favor of adopting the ‘Decision + Amendment’ approach, and believe that the National People's Congress should make a decision on issues relating to the improvement of the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, clarify the basic principles to be followed in amending and perfecting the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the core elements to be amended and perfected, and at the same time authorize the NPC Standing Committee’s decision to amend the relevant annexes to the Hong Kong Basic Law is consistent with the constitutional provisions and principles, and with the Hong Kong Basic Law, and has a solid political and rule of law foundation.”
Next, there’s a story of different representatives from Hong Kong supporting the decision for electoral changes in HK. For her part, Carrie Lam’s basically in line with the central leadership. Xinhua reports that once the changes are done the HKSAR government will properly arrange elections in the next 12 months. She also “expressed respect for the central authorities' leading role and decision making in this regard. She stressed that there is an urgent need to plug the loopholes and improve the electoral system of the HKSAR, so that the electoral system may return to the original aspirations, channels and frameworks of the principle of ‘one country, two systems’.”
Page 6: There’s a report based on PLA’s Wu Qian’s press conference. Wu said that the focus is on coordinating “the development of mechanization, informatization, and intelligent integration, build(ing) a high-level strategic deterrence and joint combat system, and gather(ing) efforts to improve the strategic ability to defend national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and (to) ensure that the goal of the century-old military is achieved by 2027.” He added that right now “the main policies in the areas of joint operations, military training, political work, logistics, and equipment have been successively introduced and implemented, and the basic framework of a socialist military policy system with Chinese characteristics has been gradually established. In the next step, as planned, the follow-up military service law, military status and rights protection law and other military laws and major regulations will be promulgated, and the formulation of major policies and systems in various fields will be completed, and the policies and systems that have been introduced will be implemented.”
He also spoke about Taiwan, saying “we are willing to create a vast space for peaceful reunification, but we will never leave any space for various forms of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities.”
Some other stories to highlight from outside PD, but which are useful to track:
China Pushing for International Covid-19 Vaccine Recognition System. It says “China plans to issue electronic health certificates and implement mutual recognition of other countries’ Covid-19 tests and vaccinations, its foreign minister said Sunday. Beijing will also set up regional inoculation stations in other countries to help overseas Chinese nationals obtain coronavirus shots, Wang Yi said at a press conference.”
China Has Ratified RCEP Free Trade Pact, Commerce Minister Says
China Is 30 Years Away From Being a Manufacturing Powerhouse, Minister Says
China Targets AI, Chips Among Seven Battlefronts in Tech Race With U.S.
‘China’s military must spend more’ to meet US war threat. General Xu Qiliang, second in command of the armed forces after President Xi Jinping, spoke at a meeting on Friday. He said that the spending was necessary to prepare the country for the “Thucydides trap,” the idea that conflict is inevitable when one power rises to displace a great one. “In the face of the Thucydides trap and border problems, the military must speed up increasing its capacity,” said Xu. “[We] must make breakthroughs in combat methods and ability, and lay a sound foundation for military modernisation.”