Small, Significant---Story of CPPCC National Committee Member Deng Xiaohong

CPPCC member Deng Xiaohong during an interview with China Radio International

By Liu Kun

Small, Significant---Story of CPPCC National Committee Member Deng Xiaohong

65-year-old Deng Xiaohong is a good story teller. Her speech on how she tracked down the pricing mechanism of the card reader for China's second-generation ID and tried to propose ways to lower the price earned her huge waves of laughter and applause at this year's meeting of China's top political advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or CPPCC. Her story intrigued me, so I decided to sit down with her for a talk.

Deng is a current member of the CPPCC National Committee, but she has more than 30 years of experience in the medical sector as a gynecologist and was deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau when SARS swept the city in 2003. Because of her experience, she was hired as a Counselor to China's Cabinet, the State Council, in 2012.

She told me she started out as a political advisor on the CPPCC Beijing Municipal Committee. One of the earliest proposals she submitted was suggesting setting up long-distance bus ticket online purchase system. She decided to make such a proposal because back then she and her friends were planning holidays to Shanxi, a province to the west of Beijing, and they found out that they had to be personally present at the bus stop on the day of their departure to buy the ticket. She was asking herself: "What if I drag my suitcase all the way there and found out that there's no ticket left? Do I have to drag it all the way back home? If you can book train tickets online, why can't you do that for bus tickets, especially long-distance ones?" She decided to write a proposal right away - CPPCC members can write and submit proposals at anytime of the year. Her proposal went through the required procedure - staff at the Beijing CPPCC Committee passed it onto the municipal department designated to take charge of transportation matters. She knew this would take a long time, as it involved the government's annual budget plan. Her proposal eventually became a reality two years later. She was invited to the launch ceremony for the service and was offered the opportunity to be the first person to use the online system.

20 years into her service at the CPPCC - 15 at Beijing municipal level and 5 at national level - she also made lots of proposals on suggestions given by people around her. At the National Committee, on the advice given by an optician friend, she once submitted a proposal that suggested allowing people suffering from monocular blindness to obtain drivers' licenses. And two years later, China's Ministry of Public Security amended the relevant regulations so that people with the condition can now obtain drivers' licenses as long as they pass certain tests and conditions.

Deng told me she knows that it's her duty to push the government to improve its public service. A lot of the times, the improvements are small but they make people's lives easier and whenever she takes one step further in that goal she feels happy about it. And she said if you intend to push for something bigger, you need to have enough patience to allow the government to consider it, make plans and execute them. That could take a long time, maybe five or ten years - you might end up achieving nothing for one term serving for the CPPCC if your proposal is unfeasible within that five year period.

Deng is among around 2200 members on the 12th National Committee of the CPPCC, who submitted more than 5700 proposals in the past year. According to the 2017 work report of the CPPCC National Committee, these proposals were passed on to 163 governmental departments. The work report also states 17.17% of them have already been taken up by the relevant government units, 67.13% will be or are being processed, and the rest, 15.7%, will be used for reference.

The CPPCC charter states that the organ has three functions: to conduct political consultation, to exercise democratic supervision, and to participate in the discussion and the handling of state affairs. Making proposals, as seen in Deng's practices, is a form of the third function - participating in the discussion and the handling of state affairs. The first function, i.e. political consultation, refers to the consultation between the Chinese Communist Party and other parties or political organizations in the country over matters of state importance. The second, namely democratic supervision, means offering suggestions and criticism, as well as supervision over the implementation of the Constitution and other laws, and over the work of the government.

Deng Xiaohong told me she hopes the CPPCC will be able to strengthen its role in political consultation and democratic supervision as she feels it hasn't yet done enough in these two fields.