Liang Huixing China’s Monocameral System Opens Up

"As early as in 1994 the eighth NPC considered writing into laws that officials register their family possessions with the government, but no follow-up measures were taken. When the Civil Servant Law entered effect in 2006, it had no single article about government employees' family property," recalled Mr. Han. "In recent years the amount of money involved in corruption cases has been soaring, the culprits occupy high positions, causing loud repercussions across the nation. I hope the NPC can address this legislation at its earliest opportunity."

Han first raised the issue in 2006. Later he received a response from the NPC Commission for Internal and Judicial Affairs, saying the situation was not ripe for such a law, and more details needed to be studied and discussed.

He reopened the issue in 2007, and got a written reply from the Ministry of Supervision, which specified the missing links that had to be filled before a law could be shaped. It also informed him that the ministry was discussing the possibilities of a decree demanding government workers to declare their incomes.

Han Deyun was content with the explanation, but wouldn't give up until seeing substantive results from his efforts. In 2008 and 2009 he brought the proposal back to the NPC. In 2008 Altay City in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region launched the nation's first officials' property declaration experiment. Han followed it closely, and wrote a lengthy report to the NPC in 2009, expounding on his idea of escalating the Altay practice into a national law. In the paper he incorporated other legal scholars' views, made an analysis of similar systems in other nations and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and anticipated draft clauses for the suggested law.

"For this year's NPC session I modified the report from last year and added the latest results of my research and thinking on the trial in Chongqing (starting this year, the city required senior officials in local judicial administrations to report their property). I hope the legislature can finally deliver legislation on that. As I believe for a reform like this, a top-to-bottom pattern can better secure the desired outcomes."

Privacy and Transparency

"I voted against it," Liang Huixing said frankly. "Judicial corruption has come to the point of crushing public tolerance, but the Supreme Court made light of this in its report to the NPC last year. In comparison the report by the Supreme People's Procuratorate is more straightforward and assuring," is how the 65-year-old member of the NPC Legal Affairs Commission explained his dissent over the work report by the Supreme Court.

"The Supreme Procuratorate revealed that 13,000 officials were convicted of taking a bribe that year, including 2,620 from judicial departments – one-third of them being judges. I think the Supreme Court is obliged to make some explanation or clarification, but in its report it skirted around the problem with such obscure expressions as "a few judges…some judges…. It is just a word game," Liang concluded.

The Supreme Court's report received 2,172 affirmative votes, 519 dissenting votes and 192 abstentions at the 2009 NPC. Most of the nay sayers were deputies from legal and business circles who have the first-hand experience of legal unfairness or bureaucracy. But not everyone of them would say publicly of their choices like Mr. Liang.

The option to cast a vote of dissent was provided for the first NPC in 1954. But no deputy publicly exercised it until 1988. At the election of members of the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee of the seventh NPC, Huang Shunxing, a deputy representing Taiwan, articulated "I disagree" from his microphone, and was immediately rewarded with loud applause in the hall. He disputed that a candidate for the committee's chair was in the position to do the job at the age of 89, and suggested replacing him with younger talent.

At the same session Mr. Huang voiced his discontent with the closeness of deputy seating, which he argued enabled deputies to peep at each other's ballots without much effort. He proposed and won a set up for secret ballots. These episodes at the 1988 NPC were deemed by some scholars "landmarks in Chinese politics and democracy."

An electronic voting system debuted at the third session of the seventh NPC in 1990, a revolution in the legislative methodology which had seen deputies casting ballots by way of handclap, raised hands, or crossing off a yes or no on a slip of paper. The introduction of this system led to a steady climb in dissenting votes and abstentions. On the vote for the work report by the Supreme People's Procuratorate at the fifth session of the eighth NPC in 1997, combined dissenters and abstentees reached a peak of 1,099, or 40.4 percent of all votes.

Vote-buying: A Vice of Democracy

Earlier this year the media exposed a scandal: the trade of votes for money. The two persons involved are He Bangxi, president of Xima Group, and Xu Dingfeng, board chair of the Siait Cables Group Co., Ltd., both natives of Anhui Province. They bribed their way first into the provincial People's Congress, and then to the NPC. The incident rang the alarm once more against under-the-table deals in elections at local and national levels.

Coveting the honor and influence that comes with a seat in the people's congresses, some officials (or the simply wealthy) approach electorates or incumbent deputies with various kinds of bait, ranging across cash, gift cards, free trips, or promises of preferential policies or promotions once in office. Some cheeky ones just set a price for each vote cast in their favor.

When Linfen, Shanxi Province, was promoted from a prefecture to a city in 2000, the election of its first Municipal People's Congress was celebrated by local people as an event of historic significance. But only eight days after the results were revealed, the news broke that five of the newly elected, all private entrepreneurs, were expelled from the contest for being found guilty of winning their nominations by offering sitting deputies dinners and gift cards.

Wang Yukai, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, summarizes, "Vote-buying mostly occurred at the grassroot level in the past, mostly in towns and counties, but is now making its way up the chain. This is a sign that previous efforts to keep vice under control were inadequate from the very beginning. On the other hand, problems with elections nevertheless indicate the importance of elections in our system; it all attests to the fact that elections, not appointments, are deciding who the nation's law-makers will be."

The Supreme Court's report received 2,172 affirmative votes, 519 dissenting votes and 192 abstentions at the 2009 NPC. Most of the nay sayers were deputies from legal and business circles who have the first-hand experience of legal unfairness or bureaucracy. But not everyone of them would say publicly of their choices like Mr. Liang.

The option to cast a vote of dissent was provided for the first NPC in 1954. But no deputy publicly exercised it until 1988. At the election of members of the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee of the seventh NPC, Huang Shunxing, a deputy representing Taiwan, articulated "I disagree" from his microphone, and was immediately rewarded with loud applause in the hall. He disputed that a candidate for the committee's chair was in the position to do the job at the age of 89, and suggested replacing him with younger talent.

At the same session Mr. Huang voiced his discontent with the closeness of deputy seating, which he argued enabled deputies to peep at each other's ballots without much effort. He proposed and won a set up for secret ballots. These episodes at the 1988 NPC were deemed by some scholars "landmarks in Chinese politics and democracy."

An electronic voting system debuted at the third session of the seventh NPC in 1990, a revolution in the legislative methodology which had seen deputies casting ballots by way of handclap, raised hands, or crossing off a yes or no on a slip of paper. The introduction of this system led to a steady climb in dissenting votes and abstentions. On the vote for the work report by the Supreme People's Procuratorate at the fifth session of the eighth NPC in 1997, combined dissenters and abstentees reached a peak of 1,099, or 40.4 percent of all votes.

Vote-buying: A Vice of Democracy

Earlier this year the media exposed a scandal: the trade of votes for money. The two persons involved are He Bangxi, president of Xima Group, and Xu Dingfeng, board chair of the Siait Cables Group Co., Ltd., both natives of Anhui Province. They bribed their way first into the provincial People's Congress, and then to the NPC. The incident rang the alarm once more against under-the-table deals in elections at local and national levels.

Coveting the honor and influence that comes with a seat in the people's congresses, some officials (or the simply wealthy) approach electorates or incumbent deputies with various kinds of bait, ranging across cash, gift cards, free trips, or promises of preferential policies or promotions once in office. Some cheeky ones just set a price for each vote cast in their favor.

When Linfen, Shanxi Province, was promoted from a prefecture to a city in 2000, the election of its first Municipal People's Congress was celebrated by local people as an event of historic significance. But only eight days after the results were revealed, the news broke that five of the newly elected, all private entrepreneurs, were expelled from the contest for being found guilty of winning their nominations by offering sitting deputies dinners and gift cards.

Wang Yukai, a professor with the Chinese Academy of Governance, summarizes, "Vote-buying mostly occurred at the grassroot level in the past, mostly in towns and counties, but is now making its way up the chain. This is a sign that previous efforts to keep vice under control were inadequate from the very beginning. On the other hand, problems with elections nevertheless indicate the importance of elections in our system; it all attests to the fact that elections, not appointments, are deciding who the nation's law-makers will be."

http://www.wei.moe.edu.cn/article.asp?articleid=22411