• Editorial

As representatives of the people, National People’s Congress deputies are supposed to submit motions on issues of concern to the public.

According to the secretariat of the fifth plenary session of the 12th National People’s Congress, of the motions submitted by deputies, 492 of them, nearly 96 percent, were related to legislation.

To better fulfill their duties, NPC deputies have attached growing importance to their posts in recent years and many of them reportedly make in-depth studies and lend attentive ears to the public before attending the annual NPC session.

A review of the motions submitted by NPC deputies in recent years reveals that their focus has shifted from group-specific issues to issues that are of more widespread concern.

That such a large majority of the motions submitted during this year’s session were related to the field of legislation is a positive development, since the greater attention paid to legislation by the NPC deputies, who exercise power on behalf of the people, reflects the ever-increasing legal awareness of ordinary people.

China has taken a big stride toward establishing the rule of law over the past decades. By focusing more on lawmaking, NPC deputies have transmitted people’s greater expectations that the nation’s governance will be in accordance with the law, and power will not be used to serve those who wield it.

Growing public interest in the building of a sound and broader legislative framework for governance is also related to the deficiencies that exist in the country’s legal system.

The repeated occurrence of wrongful convictions, the insufficient efforts of some local governments to uphold the public’s interests and the phenomenon of power being above the law highlight the need to make more efforts to advance the legislation work on a wider range of issues.