Legislators intensify efforts

Over the past year, lawmakers have intensified efforts to formulate legislation related to people's livelihoods to respond to public concerns and meet their demands in a timely manner, a senior legislator said.

For example, given that food waste was a serious problem, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, passed the Anti-Food Waste Law, aiming to offer legal backing to the country's efforts to safeguard food security and promote the traditional virtue of thrift.

The law, which took about four months to formulate, took effect immediately after the NPC Standing Committee approved it on April 29.

"We made the law in a short time through quicker and more flexible measures because we wanted to solve the waste problem, which was often the subject of public complaints," Yue Zhongming, spokesman of the NPC Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission, said last month.

Before drafting the law, the committee spent more than a month conducting surveys of restaurants and college dining management offices and soliciting opinions from people in various walks of life.

To stop people making or broadcasting programs or videos about binge eating to attract more online viewers, legislators made clear stipulations in the law, which said violators who fail to correct their behavior after being reminded by the cyberspace administration will face a maximum fine of 100,000 yuan ($15,690).

Yue said that efficiently using legislative measures to solve the problems that people care about most is also a way of taking a people-centered approach to the work, showing that the laws serve the people.

In October, a draft law against telecom and online fraud was submitted to the committee for review.

It proposed strong punishments for those who engage in illegal activities, such as selling private phone numbers as well as information related to financial and internet accounts.

Yue said that when the draft was opened to public opinion, between Oct 23 and Nov 21, the committee received more than 28,000 replies from people who supported the law.

"Some people suggested the country build a system to help victims of telecom and online fraud, calling for banks and internet enterprises to provide more information to help people spot fraud and offer rewards to encourage residents to report suspected cases," Yue said.

He added that lawmakers had studied all the suggestions for the draft, and some of them are expected to be accepted when the next version is drawn up.

He said lawmakers also paid more attention to making and amending laws in a number of major and new fields last year, while highlighting the formulation of laws involving livelihoods, including protection of personal information and data security, to promote high-quality development of technologies.

Military rights and national security were two other main areas that lawmakers have focused on during the past year.

In June, the committee passed a law on countering foreign sanctions, while in August, it approved legislation to protect the status, rights and interests of members of the People's Liberation Army.