I. Continuing to strengthen legislative work
The Standing Committee continued to strengthen and improve its legislative work. We placed greater emphasis on revising and improving existing laws and making legislative work more scientific and democratic, strove to raise the quality of legislation, and constantly improved the socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics.
1. We have submitted the draft revision of the Criminal Procedure Law to this session for your deliberation and approval.
Revising the Criminal Procedure Law has been a focus of the legislative work of the NPC and its Standing Committee, and is of great interest to all sectors of society. A total of 2,485 deputies to the current NPC have submitted bills for revising the Criminal Procedure Law. We conscientiously sorted through the bills, fully investigated and studied them, and solicited a wide range of opinions on them, and on that basis, we prepared a draft amendment that considerably supplements and improves the law's system of evidence, system of defense, coercive measures, procedures for trials, and procedures for executing judgments. A preliminary evaluation of the draft was made at the Standing Committee meeting last August, after which the entire draft was released to the public for their opinions. The draft was again evaluated at the Standing Committee meeting last December, and it was decided to submit the draft to this session for your deliberation and approval. There is widespread agreement among the members of the Standing Committee that the draft follows the central leadership's guidelines on deepening the reform of the judicial system, draws upon years of practical judicial experiences, incorporates relevant views of deputies, properly balances punishing crime and protecting human rights, accords with China's national conditions, and is basically complete.
In order to facilitate effective deliberation of the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law, we distributed copies of it to you for your comments and suggestions before this session opened. The Standing Committee gave you an explanation of the draft earlier this session. All delegations carefully examined it, and we believe that through your hard work, we can produce a good revised version of the law.