From sending to ordering

As the introduction of whole-process people's democracy, the Legal Affairs Committee of the NPC Standing Committee further requires LLOOs "to extend their work from soliciting opinions during a legislation process to soliciting opinions before and after the process".

In September 2020, the Anti-Food Waste Law (Draft) had not yet been publicly consulted. The LLOO in Jianghai district of Jiangmen city, where Li Yanhua was working, received a research assignment on stopping food and beverage waste sent by the legal affairs committee.

The research outlined three issues: the status quo of food waste in the region, the practices, experiences and problems of preventing food waste in the region, as well as the opinions and suggestions on special legislative work to stop food and beverage waste.

Ultimately, the Jianghai LLOO accomplished a 15-page research report containing more than 7,000 words.

By institutional mechanism, according to Feng Yujun, LLOOs belong to the legislative system. However, fundamentally, they possess strong attributes of grassroots-level governance and democracy.

Sun Long, an associate professor of the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China, agreed and noted that legislation needs to follow three principles — scientific legislation, democratic legislation and legislation in accordance with the law. Building LLOOs is "mainly about following the principle of democratic legislation".

A task written in the report of the 20th CPC National Congress in 2022 was "improving the working mechanisms for drawing on public opinions and pooling the wisdom of the people, and ensuring that LLOOs are well run".

This was in the section on Advancing Whole-Process People's Democracy and Ensuring that the People Run the Country, rather than in the one of Exercising Law-Based Governance on All Fronts and Advancing the Rule of Law in China.

Until this moment, LLOOs were only in the Party documents.

In 2023, the amended legislative law clarified that the working organs of the Standing Committee of the NPC should set up local legislative outreach offices in accordance with actual needs. According to Feng, drafting this into the law would be beneficial to legalize and standardize LLOOs.

After nearly a decade, many of LLOOs are now facing a common problem, namely, how to keep the people's enthusiasm for the national legislation and high participation all the time?

Hosting meetings under the banyans has become a major approach for the Jianghai LLOO to solicit opinions from local residents. CHINA DAILY

Li Yanhua is deeply concerned by the issue. The NPC Standing Committee issued the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Law (Draft) to collect opinions but with very few participants. Li found scholars from Sun Yat-sen University who proposed just over 20 suggestions.

The approach of Sanjiang county is posting proposers' photos, whose opinions and suggestions had been adopted after comparison and those who put forward proposals on the bulletin board at the local landmark square, a move to keep people's enthusiasm. Qiu Yangjun's acquaintance dragged his friend to the square to see his suggestions, saying "Look, I made the suggestion."

The NPC also made changes, from issuing orders to accepting orders from different regions.

Earlier in 2024, the NPC Standing Committee sent the legislation plans to LLOOs, and the LLOOs chose from the plans to solicit opinions according to the region's reality.

According to Qiu, the move will be more targeted, "truly encouraging people to participate in the legislation".

Many interviewees said that the NPC Standing Committee has not introduced a mechanism in assessing the work by the LLOOs, such as opinions and suggestions reported and adopted.

In Qiu's words, in remote areas like Sanjiang county, it is more important to practice whole-process people's democracy, "rather than falling into a competition over the number of opinions solicited and adopted".

He said that Sanjiang county has compiled the Medium and Long Term Development Plan for Local Legislative Outreach Offices.

The next move will be to build a platform for ethnic minority people in six counties from provincial-level regions including Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan to express their demands and reflect public opinions. At the same time, local authorities will expand the regional collaboration. Based on serving national legislation, they will expand the collaboration to matters such as supervision by local people's congress, popularization and enforcement of laws, and grassroots-level governance. Thus, regional collaborative legislation can be deployed and promoted in the same way as the regional development.

In Qiu's view, LLOOs reach remote areas such as Sanjiang county, connecting the last kilometer of the implementation of whole-process people's democracy.