Fourth, we completely revised the Law on Protecting Against and Mitigating Earthquake Disasters. After the revised version of this law was deliberated for the first time at the meeting of the Standing Committee in October, we released the full text to the public via major news media for comments, and received over 7,300 comments and suggestions in return. Special committees of the NPC promptly organized highly qualified personnel to conduct investigations in the quake zone and carefully listen to the comments of cadres and ordinary people providing earthquake relief on the frontlines. The Standing Committee considerably revised the draft law based on these comments to raise the earthquake resistance standards for building construction, especially for schools, hospitals and other public facilities, improve the emergency rescue system and strengthen the systems and measures for making interim arrangements and carrying out post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction.

2. Vigorously promoting sound and rapid development of the economy

Thoroughly applying the Scientific Outlook on Development and promoting sound and rapid economic development is a focal point of the work of the Standing Committee. In our work, we focused on major problems in economic and social development, employed a full range of oversight means, strengthened follow-up oversight, made improvements in our work, and improved the legal framework, thereby making the work of the NPC more thorough and dynamic.

First, we carried forward implementation of the major macro-control decisions and arrangements of the Central Committee. In the face of a complicated, volatile international economic situation and serious conflicts and problems hindering domestic economic development last year, the Central Committee sized up the situation and promptly shifted the primary task for macro-control, which had been defined at the beginning of the year to be the prevention of excessively fast economic growth from becoming overheated growth and the prevention of structural price increases from turning into significant inflation, and redefined it to be maintenance of steady and rapid economic growth and curbing price hikes in mid-2008. In response to the rapidly spreading global financial crisis, in November the Central Committee resolutely shifted to a proactive fiscal policy and a moderately easy monetary policy and adopted a series of policies and measures to boost domestic demand and promote economic growth.

In order to ensure proper implementation of the Central Committee's major policies and arrangements, the Standing Committee, in addition to hearing and deliberating the reports on strengthening macro-control in the financial sector and stabilizing prices as originally scheduled, also deliberated and approved the report of the State Council on responding to the global financial crisis and ensuring steady and rapid economic development at its December meeting in response to the latest developments in the global financial crisis. At the meeting, members of the Standing Committee fully affirmed the State Council's work. In addition, they also noted that because the current global financial crisis was spreading and its impact on China's real economy was continuing to widen, the external economic environment for the country's development was worsening by the day. It was also noted that because of insufficient effective demand, some deep-rooted issues and problems in China's economic and social development would also become more serious. This required us to be more aware of potential danger and bring our thinking and actions in line with the Central Committee's analysis and judgment of the situation and its overall work arrangements. It was necessary for us to faithfully follow the guiding principles of the Central Economic Work Conference, transform serious challenges into development opportunities, and change market pressure into an impetus for adjustment. While working to maintain steady and rapid economic development, we needed to concentrate on speeding up transformation of the pattern of economic development and carrying out economic restructuring. Everyone present at the meeting emphasized that the excess production capacity in many industries made it imperative for us to strictly maintain the orientation of policies and investment and avoid low-level, redundant construction and a new round of haphazard urban expansion in implementing the proactive fiscal policy and the moderately easy monetary policy.