New laws to enhance supervision

China's top legislature has begun formulating the law on administrative discipline and the law on supervision officers to improve the country's supervision legal system, a senior legislator said on Sunday.

The amended Constitution and the National Supervision Law, passed in March 2018 at the first session of the 13th National People's Congress, gave fundamental legal backing to the country's supervision reform. To ensure the National Supervision Law is effectively implemented, more supporting laws and regulations are needed, according to Xu Xianming, deputy head of the NPC's Supervision and Justice Committee.

"The drafting of the two laws－one on administrative discipline and the other on supervision officers－has been put on the legislative agenda of the 13th NPC, and we'll move forward with their legislative process this year," said Xu.

He made the remarks at a news conference on the sidelines of the ongoing second session of the 13th NPC on Sunday.

He added that the committee also planned to help the NPC Standing Committee, the top legislature, conduct research on the country's supervision reform and look into new problems in the implementation of the National Supervision Law.

The National Supervision Commission and its local branches were established across the country in the past year to form an upgraded anti-corruption task force, as the latest amendment to the Constitution defines the constitutional status of the supervisory commission.

The National Supervision Law also includes a chapter on oversight of the commission and its staff members, which states that the standing committees of people's congresses can hear and deliberate work reports of supervision commissions at the same level, and develop inspections of law enforcement.

In 2018, the NPC conducted research on the reform of the supervision system and the implementation of the National Supervision Law in six areas－Shanxi, Zhejiang, Hebei and Guangdong provinces, Beijing and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Xu said.

The NPC's Supervision and Justice Committee also set up a division to build a regular communication mechanism with the National Supervision Commission and related authorities as well as the local people's congress to seek out problems in the law enforcement and the supervision reform, he added.

Separately, referring to the falsification of data in some areas, Yin Zhongqing, deputy head of the NPC's Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, said at Sunday's news conference that it should mainly be attributed to governmental departments' disorderly data collection and lenient punishments for people who falsify data.

He added that the problem has been alleviated after the NPC Standing Committee strengthened inspections based on the Statistics Law last year.