The NPC Observer highlights the following
Senior leaders of China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), decided on Monday, July 24 to convene the NPCSC for an emergency session just a day later, on Tuesday, July 25. According to the official readout of their meeting, the sole items on the session’s agenda are a draft Criminal Law Amendment (XII) [?????????], which is not expected to pass on Tuesday, and unspecified personnel matters—or, in legal-speak, “bills of appointments and removals” [???]—which will pass and appear to be the source of the emergency.
First, a note on the only legislative bill. The Criminal Law, China’s substantive criminal code, is the country’s most amended statute. Since its last major revision in 1997, each NPCSC has amended the Criminal Law twice or more (except for the 13th, which did so only once). The 14th NPCSC signaled that it would continue this practice when it listed the Criminal Law Amendment (XII) in its annual legislative plan for 2023.
It is next to impossible to predict with certainty the issues the bill will touch on. But it would quite likely tweak the provisions relating to the trafficking of women and children, given the heightened attention from NPC delegates and the general public alike after the Xuzhou chained woman incident in January 2022. Since the passage of the previous batch of Criminal Law amendments in December 2020, NPC delegates have proposed a variety of changes to the law (besides harsher punishments for human trafficking) in 70 bills. For instance, some called for criminalizing driving under the influence of drugs, some proposed cracking down on elder abuse in nursing institutions, while others recommended abolishing the catch-all crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” or reducing the number of capital crimes. Some of these proposals could find their way into the draft submitted by the Council of Chairpersons.
Read more at https://npcobserver.com/2023/07/24/china-npc-emergency-session-qin-gang/
