The 10th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, will start its fifth annual plenary session on March 3. The 16th meeting of its Standing Committee agreed on the date in Beijing yesterday.

The meeting also proposed an agenda for the upcoming session, including hearing and deliberating the work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee and a report on the handling of proposals by CPPCC members over the past year.

The CPPCC members will also attend, as non-voting delegates, the upcoming fifth annual session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

They will hear and discuss central government's work report, which is to be delivered at the NPC session.

The CPPCC consists of representatives of the Chinese Communist Party and non-Communist parties, people without party affiliation and representatives of people's organizations, ethnic minorities and all social strata.

It also represents people from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan Province, returned overseas Chinese and other specially invited people.

Known as the government's "think tank", the CPPCC committees at all levels contain large numbers of activists and public figures from various walks of life, experts and scholars in various fields.

CPPCC members' proposals constitute an essential way to help the State to make scientific and democratic decisions, especially with proposal quality improved year-on-year and becoming more valuable and practical, said Song Baorui, vice-chairman of the Subcommittee for Handling Proposals of the 10th CPPCC National Committee.

Since its fourth plenary session, held last March, CPPCC has received 5,158 proposals from 2,053 members.

And 4,999 of them, or 96.9 percent, have been accepted and investigated by related governmental and Party departments, according to a proposal handling work conference in late January.

Most proposals were focused on economic issues, accounting for 45 percent of the total number.

The numbers of proposals on science, education, culture and health covered 29 percent and for politics, law and social security, 25 percent.

Non-Communist parties and the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce forwarded 201 proposals during the year, the largest contributors as usual.

Proposals concentrated on such themes as unifying income taxation policies between domestic and foreign enterprises, township and rural clinic construction and promoting cross-Straits communication among youngsters.

The No 0388 proposal raised by China Zhigong Party has projected in detail on why and how to make further compensation for farmers whose cropland has been levied for expressway construction.

"Such land is levied in the name of public welfare and government-use, but peasants have heavy rebellious emotion nowadays for over-low finance compensation," the proposal said.

In a reply to the proposal made last August, the Ministry of Land and Resources said it would come forward with a new compensation standard sometime this year.

(China Daily February 27, 2007)