Communist Party of China and state leaders Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, Li Ruihuan, Hu Jintao, Wei Jianxing and Li Lanqing were present at the plenum presided over by Cheng Siwei, executive chairman of the Fifth Session and executive chairman of the presidium of the Fifth Session.

A total of 2,774 NPC deputies attended the plenary meeting.

In his report, Li said that the Standing Committee has strengthened and improved its legislative and supervisory roles in the past year, and examined 30 bills and enacted 16 laws and one explanation and three resolutions on relevant laws, enabling China to achieve a step forward to building a socialist legal system with its own characteristics.

Over the past year, the Standing Committee has stipulated the Trust Law and revised laws on trademarks and copy rights to meet the requirements of China's accession to the World Trade Organization. It also promulgated the Law on Population and Family Planning and amended laws on trade unions and marriage, respectively.

While making continued efforts to improve and strengthen its supervisory work, the Standing Committee will strengthen the supervision and increase the efficiency of the supervision, in order to make new progress in both legislative and supervisory work, he said.

Li said the NPC Standing Committee has much legislative work to this year, the last year of its term. The Standing Committee will adhere to and improve the people's congress system, making it a fundamental task to develop socialist democracy and improve the socialist legal system, by improving the work style and working honestly and hard to fulfill all the tasks of this Standing Committee.

Over the past four years, the Ninth NPC adopted an amendment to the Constitution, 58 laws, four interpretations for laws and 20 resolutions on legal issues, the top legislator said.

This year, the Standing Committee will enact and revise a number of laws to meet the needs of reform, development and stability, so as to achieve the goal of building the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics.

The Standing Committee will lose no time to work out the Civil Law and laws on supervision, property rights, administrative licensing and enforcement, and government procurement, advancement of medium-sized and small enterprises, and rural land contracting. It will also revise the Agricultural Law, Li said.

Now that China has become a member of the World Trade Organization, the NPC Standing Committee will lose no time to enact and revise relevant laws concerning export commodity inspection, insurance, anti-monopoly, foreign trade, and animal and plant quarantine, according to the top lawmaker.

In exercising its supervisory functions, Li stressed the NPC should supervise and assist the work of the administrative, judicial and procuratorial departments according to law and the principle of collective supervision. The Standing Committee will set up special investigation committees to look into cases involving extremely serious violation of law.

Li said the election of the people's congress at the county level and above is scheduled to start from the latter half of this year, and that of deputies to the Tenth NPC will be completed by the end of January next year.

He drew the attention to the importance of the election in building up state power, and encouraged the NPC standing committee to do the job well within their powers and functions invested by the Constitution and other laws.

At the plenum, a draft decision on the number of deputies electable to the Tenth NPC and matters related to the election has been submitted to the ongoing Fifth Session of the Ninth NPC for deliberation. According to the draft decision, the total number of deputies to the 10th NPC should not exceed 3,000 and their election is required to be completed before the end of January 2003.

The number of deputies electable by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) to the Tenth National People's Congress is 36 and that by Macao Special Administrative Region is 12, according to He Chunlin, secretary-general of the Ninth NPC Standing Committee, who made an explanation on the drafts on the provisions on elections in the two SARs.

The size of the Legislative Council of the HKSAR has been more than doubled to about 1,000 members. Chief executives are members of legislative councils of the two SARs, respectively.

(Xinhua News Agecny March 9, 2002)