China's Legislature to Discuss 13 Draft Laws in New Session

China's top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), will convene an eight-day session on December 22 to discuss 13 draft laws and 11 reports, including reports on the reform of State-owned enterprises and the hotly debated Marriage Law amendments.

The legislative schedule was laid out at Friday's meeting between the chairman and vice-chairmen of the NPC Standing Committee, presided over by the chairman, Li Peng.

Due to differences in opinion between the public and lawmakers on issues relating to bigamy and domestic violence, lawmakers will organize plenary meeting debates instead of group discussions when dealing with the draft Marriage Law amendments, Xinhua learned from Friday's meeting.

The forthcoming Standing Committee meeting will continue its deliberation on the draft amendments to the extradition law and the law on the administration of tax collection.

The draft resolution on the maintenance of computer networks and information security, and the draft amendments to the law on regional autonomy and the law on medicine administration, which have all been reviewed before, will be presented to law-makers for further deliberation.

According to today's meeting, a draft decision on the convening of the fourth plenary session of the 9th NPC is to be submitted to this legislative session for approval.

Five new draft laws on defense education, service of military officers, assessment of environmental consequences, copyrights, and trademarks will be submitted to the Standing Committee.

The draft amendments to copyright law have been filed for legislative deliberation once before. Based on the opinions of the Standing Committee on the draft, the State Council is to submit the revised version to this session.

A China-US treaty on criminal judicial assistance will also be presented to lawmakers for approval.

The legislator will be given for inspection State Council work reports on the reform of State-owned enterprises and use of long-term T-bones, as well as a report on how the criminal procedural law has been enforced in China by a law enforcement inspection team of the NPC Standing Committee.






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