China's top political advisory body concludes annual session

The annual session of China's top political advisory body came to a close with adoption of a series of draft resolutions, including the work report of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee.

At the closing session, the newly-elected CPPCC chair Wang Yang delivered a speech in which he reviewed the results of the discussions by the members of the CPPCC.

Over the past days, the country's political advisors discussed a wide range of issues including the government work report, the amendments to the Constitution, the draft Supervision Law, and the plan for the institutional reform of the State Council.

The CPPCC also appointed its new leadership with Wang Yang elected as the chair. 

Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), presides over the closing meeting of the First Session of the 13th CPPCC National Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 15, 2018. [Photo: Xinhua]

As part of his speech on Thursday, Wang spoke about the amendments to the constitution. 

"The CPPCC will persist in making the constitution the fundamental code of conduct governing all its activities and duties, carry out its work within the scope prescribed by the Constitution and laws, and act more consciously in both thinking and action to effectively uphold, study, observe, safeguard and enforce the Constitution."

Also during the meeting, the advisory body passed its newly-revised Charter that will guide its work for this year and beyond.

"The newly-revised CPPCC Charter contains a new chapter on 'membership,' which defines clear requirements regarding the duties and the responsibilities of members.

Hopefully you will do a good job of completing the 'member's homework' of implementing the newly-revised CPPCC Charter during the first year, so that in registering to attend next year's session, you will submit not only good proposals, but also decent performance reports with concrete actions."

Wang Yang also spoke more broadly about the role of the CPPCC as a consultative body for the affairs of the state. 

"We play our role through consultation, rather than making decisions. We give correct suggestions by abiding to objective laws that require us to be practical and respect the realities."

The CPPCC is an important organ for multiparty cooperation and political consultation led by the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Over the past five years, it received over 29,000 proposals, and close to 24,000 of them were accepted and filed while 99 percent of the filed proposals had been acted upon.