The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature, started to review 13 draft laws, including amendments to the marriage law and laws concerning foreign investments in China, in its 9-day session beginning Monday.
The marriage law is revised to tackle the increasingly serious social issues of bigamists and domestic violence, and the proposed amendments to the laws on Chinese-foreign joint ventures, Chinese-foreign cooperative ventures and solely foreign funded ventures in China were intended to facilitate China's impending accession to the World Trade Organization.
The International Convention of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, one of the two United Nations human rights conventions signed by the Chinese government, was also up for deliberation and ratification. The other convention, which is on the political and civil rights of citizens, is currently under scrutiny by Chinese government departments concerned.
Other law drafts tabled before the lawmakers today were:
-- a draft regulation on Internet security and information security;
-- three pieces of legislation on taxation, regional autonomy of ethnic minorities and improvement in the nation's "people's jury system;"
-- four draft laws previously deliberated, on the national written and spoken language, fishing industry, extradition, and the protection of the interests of returned overseas Chinese.
(People's Daily 10/23/2000)
