Overseeing work affecting people's wellbeing

-- The Standing Committee strengthened follow-up oversight to promote development of employment and social security programs. It made special arrangements to hear and deliberate the State Council's report on recovery and reconstruction following the devastating earthquake that hit Wenchuan of Sichuan Province in May 2008.

-- Shortly after the Law on Food Safety was passed in February 2009, the Standing Committee began to check compliance with it and urged relevant departments to promptly formulate, sort out or improve supporting regulations.

-- In response to such problems as the difficulty of ensuring compliance with court decisions and dereliction of duty, infringements of rights, and criminal acts by employees of state organs, last year the Standing Committee heard and deliberated the report of the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate's report on strengthening procuratorial work.

-- The Standing Committee will, in this year, focus on promoting social harmony and stability, and strengthen oversight of the work to solve problems affecting people's wellbeing.

Promoting climate change work

-- The Standing Committee added two items to the agenda of its August meeting. One was to hear and deliberate the State Council's report on addressing climate change, and the other was for the NPC Standing Committee to pass a resolution on addressing climate change.

-- The Standing Committee also intensified its legislative work for a green economy and a low-carbon economy. It revised the Law on Renewable Energy, improved systems for drawing up, examining, approving, and filing such plans, created a national system based on law to guarantee the purchase of all electricity generated from renewable energy, a mechanism to compensate power grid operators who purchase such electricity, and a national fund for developing renewable energy.

Making better use of deputies' roles

-- The special committees dealt with 518 bills assigned by the Presidium of the Second Session of the 11th NPC. Of these bills, 13 involved six laws, all of which have been deliberated by the Standing Committee; 34 involved six laws that are now being deliberated by the Standing Committee; and 249 involved 42 legislative items that have been included in the legislative plan. Deputies made 7,426 proposals, and we have either resolved or made plans to resolve problems raised in 5,523 of them, 74.4% of the total.

-- The Standing Committee further expanded deputies' participation in the work of the Standing Committee and special committees, and continued to improve services to deputies.

Foreign contacts

-- The Standing Committee successfully hosted the third meeting of the cooperation council consisting of the NPC, the Russian Federation Council, and the State Duma of Russia. It invited the leader of the new US Congress to visit China, and successfully organized the first official visit to the United States by a chairman of the NPC Standing Committee in the past two decades.

-- The Standing Committee deepened exchanges with the national parliaments and congresses of Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Egypt, and Chile as well as with the European Parliament through the mechanism of regular exchanges, and at the same time successfully began exchanges with the French National Assembly and the Italian Senate under the same mechanism.

Strengthening self-development

-- The Standing Committee continued to give top priority to ideological and political development, adhered to the correct political orientation throughout the performance of the NPC's functions in accordance with the law, reached a thorough understanding of the essential differences between our country's system of people's congresses and Western capitalist countries' systems of political power.

(Xinhua News Agency March 9, 2010)