On March 11, during the final moments of its 2025 annual session, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) passed major amendments to the Law on the Delegates to the NPC and Local People’s Congresses – commonly referred to as the Delegates Law for short. Originally enacted in 1992, this statute provides for the rights and obligations of the delegates to China’s people’s congresses, the nominal “organs of state power” that perform legislative, oversight, and representative functions in China’s political system.
There are now nearly 2.8 million delegates in the approximately 40,000 people’s congresses across China’s five administrative levels: national, provincial, municipal, county, and township. Only delegates at the two lowest levels are directly selected by the electorate, whereas those at each higher level are chosen by the people’s congresses at the next lower level. While engineered to be demographically diverse, the delegates are often dismissed for playing mere rubber-stamping roles.
Despite this common conception, empirical research shows that delegates do in fact respond to their constituents and advocate their interests – albeit within strictly policed bounds. They remain reticent on sensitive topics, but are encouraged to convey public opinion on a range of everyday issues, including education, environment, healthcare, and employment. They, in other words, bring needed information about nonsensitive matters to China’s policymakers.
To gather such information, the delegates engage in various activities when not attending the relevant people’s congress’s short, annual sessions. Under the Delegates Law, the standing body of a congress – the presidium at the township level or the standing committee at each higher level – is responsible for organizing such activities. It is also in charge of distributing the delegates’ policy proposals to the proper government agencies and providing on-the-job training, among others. Such supporting work makes up part of these standing bodies’ “delegates-related work,” which (to a lesser extent) also entails supervising the delegates, such as keeping (literal) tabs on their job performance.
In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under General Secretary Xi Jinping has directed – and the people’s congresses have experimented with – various reforms, both procedural and institutional, to improve “delegates-related work,” though the specifics vary across jurisdictions. The overall goal is to make sure that delegates can – and do, in fact – effectively discharge their representative duties within politically acceptable bounds. Last month’s Delegates Law amendments codified many of those reforms, thereby both placing them on a strong legal footing and upgrading them to statutory requirements that apply nationwide. We highlight a few in this article.
Memorializing Delegates’ Political Duties
The amendments emphasized the broad “political requirements” that delegates must meet in fulfilling their duties. Article 3 as amended explicitly requires them to uphold the CCP’s leadership and adhere to the party’s and the nation’s guiding ideologies, consistent with recent changes to an array of other laws that govern the NPC and its local counterparts. Article 5 instructs them to help implement “whole-process people’s democracy” and “faithfully represent the interests and will of the people.” And, under Article 6, they must also uphold the Constitution and do their part to further law-based governance.
These requirements have long existed in practice, of course, though they previously lacked statutory force. For instance, since 2012, the NPC Standing Committee has in electoral documents expressly directed provincial-level authorities to nominate and elect NPC delegates who “support” the CCP’s leadership. The newly codified obligations also align with the party’s “Four Organs” vision for the people’s congresses, which calls on them to perform a fourfold role, including acting as political organs that “conscientiously” adhere to the CCP’s leadership and as representative organs that “always maintain close ties with the people.” Indeed, helping the people’s congresses fulfill this fourfold role was itself an obligation the amendments imposed on delegates (Article 4).
Codifying the “Two Contacts” Policy
The amendments wrote into law a mechanism intended to open up certain information channels to aid in delegates’ representative activities: the so-called “Two Contacts” policy. As stated in Article 11 of the amended Delegates Law, this policy has two prongs: State institutions – including the standing bodies, committees, and career staffs of people’s congresses, administrative agencies, and judicial bodies – must maintain close contact with delegates; and the latter, in turn, must maintain close contact with the people. “Two Contacts” dates back to the CCP’s 2013 Third Plenum Decision, which initially limited the first prong to the standing committees of people’s congresses alone. Less than a year later, however, this obligation to keep in frequent touch with the delegates was extended to all state organs.
As to the first prong, the amendments further specified that the standing committees of people’s congresses must establish mechanisms to broaden delegates’ participation in their work, including lawmaking and oversight (Article 44). Similarly, the amendments also required all state organs to invite delegates to “participate in the relevant work and activities and listen to their opinions and suggestions,” in addition to their long-standing obligation to “safeguard the delegates’ right to know” by updating the latter on their work and furnishing them with “information and material” (Article 46). (However, the amendments missed an opportunity to clarify key terms like the “materials” that delegates are entitled to receive, thereby prolonging their unequal access to information across the country.)
As to the second prong, the amendments memorialized the responsibility of the people’s congresses’ standing bodies to “periodically organize and assist in” activities through which delegates connect with the people to “listen to and convey their opinions and demands” (Article 28). These activities are especially beneficial to the delegates above the county level, whose ties to local communities are increasingly tenuous due to the multiple layers of indirect election.
The NPC likely drafted these provisions reflecting the “Two Contacts” policy in a general way to leave room for local experimentation. For example, to facilitate delegates’ involvement in the people’s congresses’ day-to-day work, the Standing Committee of the Gansu Provincial People’s Congress aims to establish direct contacts between its specialized committees and delegates with the relevant expertise. And as to delegates’ engagement with communities, the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, as another example, has been organizing all delegates from the city to directly hear their constituents’ views on draft legislation through an initiative called “Ten Thousand Delegates Go to the Grassroots.” Such local innovation is expected to continue under the amended Delegates Law.
Documenting and Disclosing Delegates’ Performance
The amendments added new provisions aimed at improving delegate accountability. The Delegates Law has long required directly elected delegates to keep the voters informed of their work and obligated the delegates’ supervisory bodies to organize regular briefing sessions with their constituents. The amendments not only extended the reporting obligation to cover all delegates (however selected), but also tasked their supervisory bodies with “keeping records on their performance of duties” and “disclosing delegates’ basic information and performance information to the public.”
The record-keeping system originates from a 2016 Central Committee document on better regulating delegates to people’s congresses and members of China’s political advisory bodies. As later elaborated in the implementing rules issued by a few local people’s congresses, a delegate’s performance file may record their attendance at legislative sessions, submission of bills and proposals, participation in training and study sessions, participation in the activities organized by standing legislative bodies and other state organs, and interactions with their constituents. The original and primary goal of creating the performance records appears to inform official decisions on whether to nominate an incumbent delegate for reelection, although publicizing such information could to some extent facilitate the public’s supervision of their representatives.
However, because of the amendments’ vague wording, the scope of disclosure will depend on local implementation and may well vary across regions. The two key terms – a delegate’s “basic information” and “performance information” – were left undefined. As to the former, for example, the NPC currently makes available only a delegate’s name, sex, and ethnicity, while some local people’s congresses also disclose their age, political affiliation, and occupation. In addition, because Chinese delegates have busy day jobs, they may have legitimate excuses for skipping certain activities. Should this information be disclosed along with their absences? The amendments were silent on this question. Local people’s congresses ultimately will need to fill these gaps.
Modestly Broadening Ethics Rules
Article 59 of the amended Delegates Law imposes additional ethical constraints on delegates. Since 2010, this article has barred delegates from interfering in specific court cases or economic activities (such as bidding and tendering) in the name of discharging their official duties. The latest amendments additionally prohibit them from interfering in specific administrative law enforcement actions or indirectly using their positions for commercial activities to seek personal gain, closing the door to such misuse or abuse of the delegates’ official positions.
In practice, there have been instances where delegates took an interest in pending court cases, ostensibly to oversee the courts. These inquiries placed the judges in difficult positions, as it might not have been immediately clear whether the delegates were acting in the public interest. It is conceivable that administrative agencies have faced similar dilemmas.
Other Changes
The amendments also introduced an array of other changes to delegates’ rights and responsibilities. For example, the amendments additionally required them to carry out research by focusing on official priorities (Article 30) and codified the mechanism whereby ineffective delegates may be forced to resign (Article 62). At the same time, the amendments also codified supportive measures such as designating “key delegate proposals” for priority processing (Article 52), reimbursements for travel expenses (Article 41), and assistance for delegates with disabilities (Article 54).
In March 2022, ahead of the elections for the delegates to the current NPC (2023–2028), the NPC Standing Committee urged provincial authorities to pick individuals who not only champion China’s political system and can fulfill their “political responsibilities,” but also “possess relatively strong ability to perform their duties,” including the ability to “maintain close contact with the people.” Last month’s Delegates Law amendments boil down to reinforcing that dual requirement.