Research On The Proceedings Of The Standing Committee Of The Local People’s Congress

Local People’s Congresses at different levels, whose Standing Committees are elected by the People’s Congress at the corresponding level, are local organs of state power. According to the constitutional system and practical operation of China, the Standing Committee of the Local People’s Congress is the key to perform duty. A series of new ideas, judgments and requirements carried out since the 18th CPC National Congress, provided the theoretical guidance to further development of the Local People’s Congress. However, some sorts of malpractice in the practice of the People’s Congress system which are non-neglectful are far from being easily solved. The stubborn problems, among which the most noticeable one is the inconformity between the actual status and the legal status, are particularly evident in the practice of the local People’s Congress.With the further reform of the national political system, strengthening the construction of system, standard and procedure is an essential requirement of the democracy construction. Work of the People’s Congresses and their Standing Committees at different levels, which covers lots of areas such as economic, political, cultural and social construction, is political and legal, while is lack of matching professionalism and procedure. It is undeniable that the general problems in the practice of the Local People’s Congress can be summarized as dereliction of duty instead of abuse of power. The fundamental political policies won’t work effectively unless being carried out as specific policies. The policy of procedure works as specific one to the system of People’s Congress and the proceeding is the core of the policy of procedure, which is the key to ensure the procedure performs efficiently. Generally speaking, there’re rules of procedure for Local People’s Congresses at different levels, including holding meetings, the consideration, voting, monitoring of proposals, and other complementary procedures. However, written rules which lag far behind the democratic process’s demand of the political system especially in the period of transformation and upgrading, make the optimization possible. Meanwhile, the proceedings are ineffective for the contradiction between expectation and reality in practice.Some shortcomings can be summarized by the research on the observation of meetings of the Standing Committee of the 7th Municipal People’s Congress of Huai’an City in Jiangsu Province and the comparition of deliberation procedure between local People’s Congresses at different levels and western Parliament. Firstly, the provision of the meetings is ambiguous, and tends to be shortened. Secondly, the procedure is lack of openness and a specific provision in this regard. Thirdly, the poor capacity and condition of the proceedings make the statement lack of quality. The procedure of deliberation turns out to be bureaucratic, the opinions of the minority haven’t been emphasized, and the communication mechanism is always inefficient. Last but not least, due to the weak power of enforcement, the procedure is short of authority. To sum up, in most conditions, the proceedings help little to practice. Reasons for decision, demonstration, responsibility for fault, respect and absorption of different opinions are not reflected in the procedure. That’s why there’s necessity to conduct research on improving the proceedings.Some reasons lead to the problems mentioned above. Firstly, the impact of the People’s Congress is weakened by the non-closure of power systems, such as the situation that the substitution of Party for government and no division between Party and government, thus the supervisory role can’t work well. Secondly, traditional political culture of China, which is backward and inflexible, is lack of separation and balance of power. It weakens the ideological basis on which the system of People’s Congress operates, and the participation consciousness of the parliamentarians of the Standing Committee of the Local People’s Congress and deputies to the People’s Congress. Thirdly, the inadequate supervision mechanism for the Standing Committee of the Local People’s Congress and the parliamentarians, the short of protection of the legitimate rights and assisting of performing duties fail to satisfy the requirements of the times. These reasons lead to representative institutions’absence of consciousness of procedure and standard, and deficiency in using rules.There is a close relationship between the optimization of the proceedings of the Standing Committee of the local people’s Congress and the improvement of resumption. Fundamentally, it’s necessary to stabilize the status of the National People’s Congress in the governance structure. On one hand, barriers of the political system and political culture should be breaked gradually. On the other hand, rigid supervision means and patronage should be applied effectively. Only in this way can strong guarantee be provided to the proceedings’optimization. Based on the rules of procedure for local People’s Congresses at different levels, drawing on the experience of the proceedings of western Parliament, meticulous arrangements can be made to the main components of the procedure, which lead to the proceedings’optimization. At the same time, a series of related work should be promoted, such as trying to make the parliamentarians full time to perform their duties and creating better working conditions, setting up supervision and evaluation mechanism which can be implemented easily, extending the level of democracy and so on.