The provincial legislature in the northwest China's Gansu Province recently paved the way for citizens to participate directly in the legislative process, in what legal experts see as a big step forward for popular lawmaking.

A clause saying "citizens can directly propose or draft legislation" has been added to an amendment to the legislative regulations for the provincial People's Congress and its Standing Committee.

It was heard and deliberated by provincial deputies on September 24.

Citizens, social groups or companies can propose legislation either directly to the Standing Committee of the People's Congress, or through provincial deputies or relevant committees and departments, according to the clause.

Any proposed legislation should be accompanied by an explanation of why it is necessary and feasible.

Legislative proposals can be submitted in person or mailed/emailed to the law committee of the Standing Committee, Zhang Zijun, a division head with the committee, said.

Propositions will be made public at legislative hearings or through media releases to solicit opinions from citizens, he said.

The Standing Committee could also lend intellectual and financial support to citizens drafting legislation, he added.

Although popular participation in government is common in other parts of China, Gansu's attempt to standardize and incorporate such participation into its legislative framework is, in Zhang's words, "a pioneering step for the entire nation".

He also said there is plenty of evidence showing that citizens are "perfectly capable" of proposing and drafting legislation.

The provincial regulation on monitoring the use of the Yellow River in Gansu, for instance, is based on a research report by a graduate student of economics at Lanzhou University in the late 1990s.

Similarly, the 99 draft regulations on the prevention and control of desertification, drafted by an engineer with the forestry bureau in Gansu's Baiyin city in 2000, contributed significantly to the official regulation released in 2003 by the provincial government.

The revised draft of the provincial legislative regulation itself is mainly the product of an associate professor at the Lanzhou Polytechnic University, Zhang said.

The professor was assigned to complete the task under a contract signed last June between the law committee and the university.

The goal was to research democratic legislative practices and complete a revised draft of the current regulations, which were released in 2000.

Increased public participation in the legislative process has grown increasingly common across China in recent years.

Aside from holding open hearings on legislation, lawmakers have experimented with citizen involvement in drafting legislation in Anhui, Guangxi, Hubei, Jiangxi and Sichuan provinces and autonomous regions, as well as in the municipality of Beijing and the cities of Kunming, in Yunnan Province, and Zhengzhou, in central China's Henan Province.

(China Daily October 10, 2007)