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2nd Ld-Writethru: China considers granting Sansha city local legislative power

Xinhua, March 12, 2015 Adjust font size:

National legislators proposed to grant the local legislative power to Sansha city of south China's Hainan Province, said the national legislature Thursday.

The report was submitted to the presidium of the National People's Congress (NPC) annual session for review by the NPC Law Committee, in charge of gathering NPC deputies' opinions about the draft revision to the Legislation Law during panel discussions and preparing an improved version of the bill.

Established in 2012, Sansha is one of the country's youngest cities, and was not included in the bill when it was submitted at this session.

The city government is located on the 2.13-square km Yongxing Island, the largest island in the Xisha Islands group in the South China Sea.

The bill to revise the Legislation Law was tabled for the third reading at the session, after two readings by the NPC Standing Committee last year.

The bill plans to expand local legislative power from the existing 49 cities to at least 284 nationwide.

During the panel discussions, NPC deputies suggested that Sansha city is at the same administrative level as the 284 cities and is qualified to have the power, said Qiao Xiaoyang, the committee director, when delivering the report to the second meeting of the presidium.

After careful discussions, the Law Committee decided to uphold this proposal, Qiao said.

In addition to Sansha, the bill will also give the local legislative power to another three cities, including Dongguan and Zhongshan cities in south China's Guangdong Province and Jiayuguan City in northwest China's Gansu Province.

The improved version of the bill included another change about statutory taxation.

The bill underlined the principle of statutory taxation in a provision and made clear that a tax can only be levied or canceled through law and the basic system of taxation can only be decided by the law.

NPC deputies suggested change made on the wording of this provision and clarifies that setting tax rate should also be decided by the law, Qiao said, adding that the Law Committee supported the proposal.

The presidium also heard reports on how deputies thought about the government work report, the national economic and social development plan and the central and local budgets as well as draft resolutions on these documents.

A total of 30 revisions were made in the government work report based on the advice from NPC deputies.

The presidium approved to distribute the improved version of the bill and draft resolutions of these documents to delegations for further discussion. Endi