NPC Discussing Trust Law Draft, Amending Customs LawChinese top legislators will discuss draft amendments to six laws and three draft laws, including the long-suspended Trust Law during the 16th Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC).The six-day session, which opened yesterday in Beijing, will review draft amendments to laws on product quality, customs, patents, fisheries, judges and public prosecutors. The top legislative body will also deliberate draft laws on crop seeds, trusts and the use of the national language. NPC sources said the draft law on the state language in general use, submitted for preliminary review, aims to promote exchanges among different ethnic groups, popularize culture and education, develop science and technology, and raise efficiency. The draft law regulates putonghua (Mandarin) and standard Chinese characters which are used nationwide. The regulation on the use of minority ethnic languages will be left to the revision of the Law on Regional National Autonomy. Legislators are expected to approve the draft Crop Seeds Law and the amendments to the Law on Product Quality and the Law on Customs on Saturday when the session ends. The draft Trust Law is being submitted for a second review. Under China's law on legislation, a draft law is put to a vote after three readings by legislators. The draft Trust Law was first drawn up in 1993 by the NPC Financial and Economic Committee, and submitted to the Eighth NPC Standing Committee for primary review in 1996. The original version of the draft law regulates both basic fiduciary relations and trust companies. The Eighth NPC Standing Committee did not hold a second deliberation of the draft because its members were split on it. One of the major disputes centred on the scope of the law's regulations, NPC sources said. Under the recommendation of the Law Committee and the Financial and Economic Committee of the NPC, the draft to be deliberated this time doesn't contain provisions regulating trust companies. But it retains the part governing basic fiduciary relations, including civil, commercial and charitable fiduciary activities. To develop public welfare through trusts, an entire chapter of the draft law is devoted to charitable fiduciary activities. It adds aid to the disabled, health care and sports development, and environmental protection as purposes for creating charitable fiduciary relations. The draft law hands the power to approve charitable fiduciaries from trust supervisory and managerial departments to public welfare managerial institutions that give support to charitable fiduciary activities. |
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