China Law Blog

The PRC National People's Congress has been focusing on increasing public involvement in China's lawmaking process. One technique it has been using to achieve that has been to issue draft laws and provide the public with an opportunity to comment on them. The internet has been used extensively for this purpose.

On November 6, the National People's Congress issued three draft laws for public comment. These are:

-- Tort Liability Law (Comment Draft)

-- Election Law Revision (Comment Draft)

-- Oil and Natural Gas Pipeline Protection Law (Comment Draft)

Copies of thse laws (in Chinese) can be found at the NPC website. I have also made convenient PDF versions of each law and if you want a copy of them, just leave a request (with your email address, which will be hidden from public view) in the comments section below. The NPC has installed a web based system for collecting public comments here.

These drafts are all quite significant. China has been struggling to adopt a tort code for over 10 years. The importance of the issue of elections in China is obvious to everyone. The issue of pipelines arises from China's ongoing shift from coal to oil and gas as a fuel source and the concomitant need for pipelines to transport the liquid fuels. Though I do not normally pay much attention to China's draft laws (because there are so many of them and because only a portion of them ever get enacted). However, these drafts deal with important issues (two of which are important to my firm's clients) so I be doing a short summary of each draft law in later posts.