Institutionalization, Specialization, and Autonomy in Reforming China’s Legislature
Chien-min Chao, Ph. D.
Distinguished Professor
Graduate Institute for Development Studies National Chengchi University
Taiwan
Chun-chih Chang Ph. D. Candidate
Graduate Institute for East Asia Studies National Chengchi University
Visiting Student Researcher University of California, Berkeley
Paper to be delivered at the 106th American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, September 4-7, 2010, Washington, D.C.
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Abstract
This paper tries to find out if China’s political system is becoming more specialized and institutionalized in the reform era by examining the structure of the legislative committees. After examining changes made to the composition of the NPC committees, the paper concludes that the policy of rejuvenation has actually made it hard for the seniority system to take root. The average time served by members of the legislative committees is on the decline, adding additional challenge to the stability of the institution. Although size of the committees has been enlarged and daily
operations have been regularized, the autonomy of the legislative committees is obviously still fragile. While the party’s presence might not be as predominant as before, 80% of the committee members are still CCP party members. In general the level of education among committee members is pretty high, but professionalism remains a distant goal. The same old rule of proportional representation under which different segments of the population is proportionally represented is still in place, sapping the efforts of professionalization. Overall, it is found that specialization and institutionalization are still restricted. In the foreseeable future, it is not unimaginable that more professionalization might accrue but it is long way off towards the goal of being a full-fledged legislature of which autonomy is an essential part.
Key words: National People’s Congress, Permanent Committees, Institutionalization, Specialization
After thirty years of reforming its economic system and integrating its market with the outside world China’s political system remains basically “resilient
authoritarianism” (Nathan 2003), with its National People’s Congress (NPC) deemed as a rubber stamp. However, changes have been made to the Chinese legislature for two reasons: First, there is a need for a functional legal environment so that China’s vibrant capitalistic market economy won’t be dragged down as a result of institutional deficiencies and constraints; and second, rampant political malfeasance needs to be checked lest the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party erode to a point beyond salvation. And one of the most salient components of this managed reform has been with the NPC’s permanent committees. Their functions, both in the area of legislation and supervision, have been visibly invigorated (Dowdle 1997, 123; O’Brien 1990, 148-156; Tanner 1999).
However, despite the increasing importance of the NPC in general and its permanent committees in particular the legislative organ in China remains in great
“Chinese characteristics,” refusing to follow the footsteps set by many other
previously developmental authoritarian states such as Taiwan and South Korea where the legislature bore the task of articulating interests often conflicting in nature as the society was getting more pluralistic and liberalized. Where is China’s legislature headed? Will China’s lawmaking body continue to be as compliant and subservient as it has been acting as an extended arm of the executive branch? Would it replicate the experiences set by its East Asian neighbors and gradually evolve into an institution which the administrative branch dares not to ignore? Is it possible that some sort of
“Chinese characteristics” might materialize as it has been the case in the economic arena?
This paper tries to analyze if China’s political system is becoming more
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specialized and institutionalized in the reform era by examining the structure of the legislative committees. The paper examines changes made to the composition of the NPC committees since the Ninth NPC, held in 1998, when the committee system was basically formed after two decades of evolution and development.1 The paper
concludes that although progress has been made towards the goal of
institutionalization as the committees are meeting more frequently and regularly and more rules have been enacted to facilitate the making of decisions in the legislative organ, the policy of rejuvenation has actually made it hard for the seniority system to take root. The average time served by members of committees is also on the decline, adding additional challenge to the stability of the institution. Although size of the committees has been enlarged and daily operations have been regularized, the autonomy of the legislative committees is obviously still fragile. While the party’s presence might not be as palpable as before, 80% of the committee members are still party members.
In general the level of education among committee members is pretty high, but professionalism remains a distant goal. The same old rule of proportional
representation under which different segments of the population is proportionally represented is still in place, sapping the efforts of professionalization. Overall, it is found that specialization and institutionalization are still restricted. In the foreseeable future, it is not unimaginable that more professionalization might accrue but it is long way off towards the goal of being a full-fledged legislature of which autonomy is an essential part.
Development of the NPC’s Permanent Committees
1 While the number of NPC committees were increased with each NPC congress it was stabilized at nine at the 9th NPC congress.
When the NPC was formed and held its first congress in 1954 there were only two committees, the Ethnic Affairs Committee and the Bill Committee, to provide legal assistance to the arguably biggest legislative structure on earth. As Mao’s regime became more mobilizational in orientation these two legislative establishments were pummeled just as the rest of the power structure during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. After Mao’s demise, in the wake of debating writing of a new constitution in 1982 it was decided that permanent committees were to be made part of the reformulation to help with reconstructing of a new legal system that had quickly become hallmark of Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies. Six committees were established in 1983 as a result of this new drive of institution-building and
legalization: the Law Committee (formerly Bill Committee), the Ethnic Affairs Committee, the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee. During the 7th NPC Congress, held in 1988, another committee, the Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee, was created. The Environment Protection and Resources Conservation Committee (renamed Environment and Resources Committee in 1994) was added to the 8th NPC’s Congress in 1993, and at last, in 1998 at the 9th NPC Congress, the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee was founded (Cai 2003a, 243-250; Zhou 2005).
Each committee has its own area of jurisdiction (see Table 1) but in general legislative committees are responsible for introducing and reviewing new bills and acts, scrutinizing questions and queries presented to the NPC and its Standing Committee (NPCSC), researching, making contacts, and investigating cases (Jiang 2002, 293-295). However, the division of labor among committees is not very clear-cut and their work load is not consistent. Responsibilities prescribed for the committees are not well-defined. While some committees may be made accountable
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to many administrative agencies, others may only have to face one or two agencies.
It is not unusual for some committees to only review a bill once every few years.
This institutional weaknesses will no doubt affect the effectiveness of the NPC (Yin, et al., 2003). Among the NPC committees, the Law Committee stands out as the most important. The Committee has the power to “universally review all bills”
(tongyi shengyi) after it is reviewed by a relevant committee and presented to the NPC or its Standing Committee.
[Table 1 is about here]
According to Article 35 of the NPC’s Organic Law, members of the legislative committees as well as their leadership are to be nominated by the Presidium and approved by the NPC congress. Only NPC delegates are eligible for the nomination.
When the NPC is not in session, the NPCSC can only fill in “individual deputy chairman” and “part of the committee members” and candidates for these
supplementary elections shall be nominated by the NPCSC Chairman’s Meeting and approved by the NPCSC plenary meeting. In reality, the list is prepared by the NPC’s CCP Party Committee and handed over to the Presidium. The Presidium will then give the list to the delegates and get finalized after discussion and “fermentation”
(yunniang). The delegates will then vote on the final list (Chen 2008).
Institutionalization and Specialization
In a pioneering work, Samuel P. Huntington (1965; 1968) tried to establish the relationship between institutionalization and political stability. To him,
institutionalization is the process by which an organization and procedures “acquire value and stability.” The level of institutionalization of a political system can be defined by the adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence of its organizations
and procedures. Nelson W. Polsby (1968) came up with three characteristics for an institutionalized organization: First, it is relatively well-bounded, differentiated from its environment. Its members are easily identifiable and its leaders are recruited principally from within the organization. Second, the organization is relatively complex. Its functions are internally separated on some regular and explicit basis.
There is a division of labor in which roles are specified. There are regularized patterns of recruitment of roles. Third, the organization tends to use universalistic rather than particularistic criteria of conducting its internal business. Procedures and rules are followed. If an organization is autonomous enough to decide its own leadership rather than being decided by others, leadership positions are being filled internally and according to set rules such as seniority, the average term limit is relatively lengthy and members of the organization are recruited according to well-defined rules, then the organization is more institutionalized.
This paper contends the issues of institutionalization and specialization in China’s NPC by examining the composition of its permanent committees. As China’s market economy is becoming more complex and its integration with rest of the world heightened it is inevitable that new institutions are developed and their functions more specialized. However, institutionalization is easier in quantitative terms in the NPC as meetings are being held more regularly, more internal rules are written to facilitate smooth operations and more bills are made into laws, than in qualitative terms. Past experiences show that most newly appointed NPC committee leadership are outsiders and there is also difficulties nurturing a seniority system there (Chao 2002).
Since lawmaking requires processing wide array of information and uncertainties is virtually name of the game, specialization is important in the process as
professional opinions can help reduce uncertainties. It is not efficient, nor feasible, to have the whole chamber involved in the reviewing of bills. This is why legislature
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is willing to delegate powers to the permanent committees where professionalism can be derived through division of labor with sufficient channels of information and large staff at hand. The existence of functioning specialized committees has become bell-weather to gauge the status of the legislature in that political system (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1987; 1989; Krehbiel 1991).
However, scholars differ on both the definition and measurement of
specialization. Frequency of communication between the legislative committees and the administrative branch, the interactions between committees and the legislative chamber, stability of the assembly and legislative performance have all been singled out as indicators. As with the permanent committees themselves some focus on the study of the committees as a whole while others choose to explore behaviors of committee members (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1997). The latter approach pays more attention to background of the members, how behaviors of committee members are affected by the interests of the constituencies, and how the work at the committees influence professionalism of the committee members, and so on (Asher 1974, 66-67).
Concentrating on the composition of the legislature, Richard Sisson (1973, 17-38) argues that legislative personnel tend to have two different thinking: First, they like to emphasize the linkage between committees and the environment and hence, people with different backgrounds will have to be represented so that mobility can be maintained. Second, to keep the organization young and rejuvenated a mechanism to rotate leadership must be in place.
On the issue of specialization it is found that the average age of the NPC committee members continues to come down and this trend, along with higher level of education, suggests that the chronic problems of aging and incompetence for those committee members who often find the assignment last leg of their political career before retirement might be gradually eliminated. In the future, efforts should be
shifted to recruitments who might possess more expertise so that professionalism of the committees can be beefed up. Overall, the paper finds that a combination of reasons including a less manipulative CCP, easy access of information,
departmentalism, and growing pluralistic trend in the society have all contributed to the increase of specialization at the NPC’s committees.
Empirical Data
Using data obtained from NPC’s website (www.npc.gov.cn), Renwu Online (www.renwuonline.com), and China Vitae (www.chinavitae.com) the following section attempts to delineate the characteristics of the NPC committees and in the process gauge the degree of institutionalization and specialization. Altogether, demographic data of 680 committee members were compiled and analyzed.
Skewed Institutionalization
In this paper the issue of institutionalization is basically tackled from the angles of stability, internal complexity and coherence. Specifically, the ratio between new recruits and senior members, whether seniority is considered when filling up the vacated leadership posts, the average time committee members served, and the ratio of the CCP party membership and non-party membership at the legislative committees are issues of concern.
Table 2 shows that the overall size of the committees has been on the rise, testifying to the resolve for shaping a better legalistic environment as modernization in China is in full swing. The 10th NPC committees had a membership of 235, a gain of 25 relative to the previous NPC, and the size was kept constant at the 11th NPC. It is not surprising that it is those committees which are not political in nature and whose tasks have great bearings on people’s livelihood, such as the Financial and
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Economic Affairs Committee and the Environment and Resources Committee (gained 8 and 7 additional members respectively or roughly 30% of their total size at the 10th NPC Congress) that have been given the priority for upsizing. The Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee and the Law Committee were also benefited, gaining six and five new members respectively, as the fight against corruption has been
heightened as a central task by the government. The downsizing of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee (lost six seats or 23% of the original membership) is understandable as the focus of the government now is rightfully domestic agenda but the same thing happened to the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee is somehow a conundrum. China’s rural area was undergoing unprecedented restructuring at the turn of the new century in the wake of huge unrest unleashed by the humongous rates of taxes and fees imposed by the local governments, and stability in the rural sector has been of great concern to any regime in China’s long history.
It is worth noting that while both members and leadership of the committees gained strength at the 10th NPC, it is the leadership (the deputy chairmen of the committees) that took the lion’s share of the enlargement, acquiring eleven additional vice chairmanship in both of the 10th and 11th NPC. The development is intriguing given that membership of the committees was downsized at the 11th NPC to make room for the leadership enlargement (the 11 membership lost was exactly the number gained by the leadership). What is the rationale behind the tradeoff? What does this mean for the NPC committees in the wake of reinforcing their work? These questions remain to be answered. As far as institutionalization is concerned, the message is a mixed one. While a more refined division of work is possible as a result of the strengthened leadership, the reform also demonstrates the propensity to give more precedence to the leadership instead of the rank-and-file. It also unveils weakness in the drive towards institutional stability as the fundamental structure of the committee
system remains in fluid.
The augmentation of both leadership and rank-and-file members, along with other developments, suggests that the committee system was buttressed at the 10th NPC Congress. Given the pace of neck-breaking growth of the economy and the need to strike a balance between development and environmental protection it is
commendable that more resources are channeled into relevant legislative committees.
Furthermore, the number of committees has finally been set at nine after nearly two decades of expansion and this is a good first step in building a stable legislative committee system. However, given the huge responsibilities endowed to the
committees, such as the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee, the failure to gain additional resources says volume of the priorities of the government.
This lends legitimacy to the accusation that China is still a developmental state which opts more for the development of its economy.
[Table 2 about here]
While gaining significantly in size especially at the leadership level the NPC committees are also losing some of their membership for various reasons in no small scale. Table 2 shows that at the 10th NPC eleven new members and fourteen vice chairmen were added to the roster. However, the newly-acquired eleven members were all lost at the 11th NPC. Table 3 shows additional membership lost when the NPC is not in session. A better fortified leadership could certainly increase legislative efficiency and it might also help with professionalization and stability but only a small fraction of those taking the new leadership posts actually came through internal promotion. The boundary of the committees is still tenure as outside penetration (especially from the CCP party) remains a common practice. This tradition bodes ill
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for the establishment of a seniority system.
In general, the NPC’s committees are more institutionalized in terms of
convening of the meetings, more regularized recruitment of members and leadership, and more rules have been written on which their daily operations are based, but problems remain abundant. One month before the holding of the 11th NPC Congress in March, 2008, three deputy chairmen, Ren Maodong, Wu Ritu, and Ni Yuefeng, were appointed, indication of lack of respect for the NPC as an institution.
[Table 3 is about here]
For the NPC committees to be stable it is imperative that a certain proportion of its membership is staying there on a longer term basis. Table 4 illustrates that the establishment of the seniority system is on the reverse trend. Overall, the ratio of senior members, as opposed to new members, not only has not increased it is actually on the decline. During the period under scrutiny it went down nearly five percentage, from a third of its membership (33.2%) in the 9th NPC to 29.8% at the 10th NPC Congress and fell further to 28.9% at the 11th NPC. Second, the nine committees are
For the NPC committees to be stable it is imperative that a certain proportion of its membership is staying there on a longer term basis. Table 4 illustrates that the establishment of the seniority system is on the reverse trend. Overall, the ratio of senior members, as opposed to new members, not only has not increased it is actually on the decline. During the period under scrutiny it went down nearly five percentage, from a third of its membership (33.2%) in the 9th NPC to 29.8% at the 10th NPC Congress and fell further to 28.9% at the 11th NPC. Second, the nine committees are