The question is: Does it matter to be more specialized? Mezey (1979, 54-55) suggests specialization could facilitate member participation in policy formulation, deliberation, and oversight. This section focuses on formulation and deliberation of bills.
Statistics suggest that committees’ role in bill-formulating has been declining in the NPC. Table 8 reveals that bills formulated by the NPC committees went down nearly ten percentage, from 28% in the 9th NPC to 16.7% at the 10th NPC Congress and then, went up slightly to 18.4% at the 11th NPC. The results contravene the theme that specialization has brought committees more capacity and autonomy.
The NPC committees’ direct involvement in bill-formulation may remain steady, but their role has been codified. The Legislation Law, promulgated in 2000, and
“Opinions Concerning Fully Fulfilling Functions of the Permanent Committees”
issued by the CCP Central Committee in 2005, have consolidated the role of the committees in the process of bill formulation in two ways:
First, committees are now required to get involved as early as possible (tiqian
jieru) in the drafting of laws prepared by the State Council, the Central Military
Figure 1 The Composition of Nine Special Committees in the NPC
0%
Commission, the Supreme People’s Court, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
Second, committees are also asked to get involved in the process of deliberation of bills as early as possible (tiqian shenyi). The Chairmen's Meeting which has the powers to set the agenda for the NPCSC and is composed of the chairman, vice chairmen and the Secretary General of the NPC often seeks advice from relevant committees on issues such as whether the bill is to be tabled, what are the major areas of contention and so on. To sum up, while permanent committees may not involve in detail in the process of bill formulation, they are really supervisor and consultant in the writing of a law.
Table 8 Sponsors of legislative bills Sponsor
Total Others Permanent
Committee
The NPC committees play a pivotal role when a bill is being deliberated.
Normally, after a bill is tabled by the NPC Standing Committee, a permanent committee is assigned to review the bill and relevant committees are also invited to the discussion. A report will then be presented to the Standing Committee and to the Law Committee for further review. Empowered to review all bills in what has been known as tongyi shenyi (or “universal deliberation”) the Law Committee is extremely important in the process. After gathering information from all possible channels including the State Council, local governments, and the public, the Law Committee amends the drafted bill. The importance of the permanent committees in
bill-deliberation can be measured by the frequency of reviews and amount of time spent on the reviews.
Table 9 reveals frequency and average time of bill deliberation. The results are mixed. While average time for bill deliberation has increased from 7.47 months to 10.29 months, or 2.82 additional months, the frequency has fallen from 2.65 to 2.53.
Average time per deliberation increases tremendously, from 1.25 months at the 9th NPC to 4.07 months at the 11th NPC. These empirical results echo Tanner’s research (1999) on Chinese law-making process in that permanent committees could interfere into the legislative deliberation as the center for incorporating social opinions and making specialist’ investigation. It also means that committee members are more conscientious about their duties and responsibilities. This is why they are willing to spend time in deliberating bills instead of throwing support blindly behind. Should the trend continue, it is not impossible that the NPC one day might emerge as a
battleground where various interest groups vie for influence.
Table 9 Frequency and average time of bill deliberation Term Number of Bills Average Time per Bill
(Month)
By delving into the composition of the NPC’s permanent committees during the 9th, 10th, and 11th terms, the paper concludes that specialization is indeed on the rise.
On average, over 70% of committee members have either professional backgrounds or committee experiences or both. The empirical results further suggest that
information efficiency is best able in explaining the NPC committees’ behaviors.
Specifically, the paper draws on the following findings:
First, generally speaking, the NPC committees are very professional ones, with 63.7% of members possessing expertise relevant to the duties prescribed by the committees. In the three terms that we analyze professionalism has climbed upward by 3.1%. This may not look huge but the rate of professionalism has been kept above 60% in all three terms without exception.
Second, unfortunately, the growth of specialization at the NPC has been achieved at the expense of its stability. There are less ranking members at the 11th NPC than the 9th NPC as the average time served in the committees falls from 1.32 term (or about 6.6 years) to 1.26 term (about 6.3 years).
Third, there is differential development of specialization among the nine
permanent committees. Some committees stress members’ professional experiences in the past while others pay more attention to experiences at other committees. There are also committees which require neither.
Fourth, while numerically the NPC committees’ role in bill-drafting has seen no significant increase, their status is codified and legalized. On average, more time has been spent on bill deliberation and committees’ autonomy and capacity have
appreciably increased.
It has been pointed out that legislative committees might need to feature the following characteristics in order to be active (Olson 1994, 57): its jurisdiction must be clearly fixed to issues and parallel to the administrative system; members can continue their committee services for a long time; only seniors can take the position of committee chairman, and members should be familiar with committee affairs, relevant issues, and behaviors of administration and interest groups. Our study indicates that while membership stability is still an issue, the NPC is obviously more specialized now, and specialization has brought more autonomy and capacity to the committees.
The NPC is gradually shifting from a congress in adolescence to a congress in transition.
References:
Agh, Attila. 1998. “Changing Parliamentary Committees in Changing East-Central Europe: Parliamentary Committees as Central Sites of Policy Making.” In The
New Roles of Parliamentary Committees, eds. Longley, Lawrence D. and Roger
H Davidson. London: Frank Cass, 85-100.Baekgaard, Martin. 2010. “Self-selection or Socialization? A Dynamic Analysis of Committee Member Preferences.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 35 (3):
337–359.
Cai, Dingjian. 2003. Zhongguo renmin daibiao dahui zhidu (The Institution of the Chinese People’s Congress). Beijing: Falu chubanshe, Fourth Edition.
Chao, Chien-min. 2002. “Zhonggong dangguo tizhi xia lifa jiguan de zhiduhua (Institutionalization of the Legislature in China’s Party-State System).”