Changhao Wei: 'The People's Congress has never rejected anything'

Almost 3,000 delegates will gather in Beijing starting Wednesday for the National People's Congress. It is by far the largest parliament in the world. Is it also the most powerful?

When we talk about the People's Congress as the great assembly that meets every year in March, we can say with certainty: on paper, it is a powerful institution. The People's Congress can appoint and dismiss leaders. It can amend the Constitution, declare wars, pass important laws, and much more. But in practice, its power is limited. Like all other state institutions, the People's Congress is under the leadership of the Communist Party, which does not leave much autonomy to actually exercise all these wonderful constitutional powers. In fact, the People's Congress has never rejected anything put before it – no law, no report, no appointment, nothing. Moreover, it only meets once a year. These annual sessions are important events in China's political calendar, but they are highly orchestrated.

If the NPC is such a powerful institution only on paper, why does the Communist Party bother to organize such a massive event every year?

Only the NPC can approve the state budget and other key items like the annual socioeconomic development plans. And every five years, when there's a state leadership transition, only the NPC can put the official stamp of approval. It's a public, televised opportunity to pat themselves on the back and to show the public in China and worldwide what the priorities will be for the upcoming year. The premier gives the annual government work report, discussing the plans for the GDP and socioeconomic goals. This is the part that attracts the most attention.

China goes to great lengths to put the delegates at the People's Congress in the spotlight. All of their short biographies are published online. They include celebrities such as former basketball player Yao Ming, party officials and business leaders. How does one become a delegate to the People's Congress?

The delegates are chosen every five years and are supposed to represent the 34 provinces and regions, including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, which the PRC claims as its territory. The Taiwanese are chosen from mainlanders with supposed Taiwanese ancestry, without a connection to Taiwan's current government. The military and the People's Armed Police have their own delegations.

There are provincial People's Congresses who select the regional delegates. Some are designed to have important positions in the central government or the party apparatus at the central level. They are decided on by the central leadership. Apart from that, provincial authorities select delegates according to political loyalty and their capabilities to perform in the office.

How much power do these delegates have?

At most, delegates have room to propose changes or improvements. Most of that doesn't happen during the big meeting in March but in the so-called NPC Standing Committee and other legislative bodies under the NPC. Delegates can represent the interests of their constituents in non-sensitive matters, like environment, healthcare, housing, and transportation, but not on political rights.

Also, the dynamic among the delegates vis-à-vis the party has changed in the last decade. During Hu Jintao's tenure as party secretary, you could see a lot of pushback from the delegates in the form of dissenting or abstaining votes on certain reports. At that time, many were very unsatisfied with how the judicial system was functioning. When the highest court and highest prosecutor's office reported on their work, the approval rate at one point was only around 80 percent, which is really low by Chinese standards. But this has been occurring less, and I think it's partly because delegates are selected more based on political loyalty.

You dedicate much effort to tracking all the discussions on laws at the NPC on your website, NPC Observer. If legislative powers are so limited, what's the value of understanding legal processes in China?

To be more precise, most of the laws get passed by the NPC Standing Committee, not by the NPC itself. While the NPC Standing Committee approves almost all bills submitted for its review, once in a while, some controversial bills end up being permanently shelved. And the bills that eventually pass will have undergone changes, sometimes drastic ones, over the course of the months- or even years-long legislative process. In making these changes, the legislature considers the views of a variety of sources, including not only the lawmakers, but also central government agencies, local governments, experts and scholars, and the general public as well.

The Standing Committee of the People's Congress also oversees the enforcement of the Constitution. It alone has the authority to conduct a constitutional review of all the other legislation passed in China, including the rules passed by the state council and its agencies, the judicial authorities, and local legislatures.

China is not exactly known for its rule of law. How does it work in practice?

Constitutional review definitely has limits in China. It will not vigorously enforce political rights like the freedom of speech, but people are using it to challenge what they think infringes on their rights and have achieved some limited success. Last year, some citizens challenged a local government document that says if you have a criminal record, you cannot get a minimum subsistence allowance from the government, a guaranteed income for low-income people. The NPC Standing Committee ruled that this is unconstitutional. It said that the Constitution guarantees people's right to receive material assistance from the state, and you cannot just categorically deny this benefit to people with criminal histories.

Is there a chance that China will develop toward a constitutional state?

No, I wouldn't go that far. We have to remember that the Communist Party ultimately controls everything. But reforms that afford greater protections for private rights or additional opportunities for public participation are possible in some areas. There are some efforts to improve the mechanisms for public comment on draft laws at the NPC, for instance.

Is there still hope in engaging with China to inspire changes in the legal system?

This is what my work and the work of my colleagues is all about. We carry out cooperative projects with Chinese scholars and Chinese officials, if possible, to exchange what the US has done in different areas and what China can learn from the US experience. There's not a great government-to-government relationship between China and the US at the moment. However, when we talk to experts in China, they still always look to overseas experience, including the US, even though they may not admit to that officially.

We work on issues such as regulatory reform, criminal procedure, antidiscrimination, juvenile rights, also on data governance and AI regulation. China is actively developing and looking to foreign practices in all those areas. Of course, political priorities and frameworks are constantly changing. But we always try to adapt to new circumstances, identifying new spaces and alternative channels to keep striving for a positive impact.

Changhao Wei is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, focusing on China's national legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC). As part of his project, Wei runs NPC Observer, a website that provides reporting, analysis, and original research on the NPC. Born and raised in China, Wei holds a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.