Enlivening China's Parliament

Abstract

In this set of translations, Cao focuses on advocating for changes to the National People's Congress (NPC). The selection includes two written pieces, one document, and one radio address. In Cao's work below, we see echoes of Zhao Ziyang's statement that, when emphasizing democracy, care must be taken not to jeopardize stability but to enhance efficiency. In the translation of his article from Democracy and the Legal System, Cao proposes a regulation allowing ordinary citizens to sit in on the sessions of the NPC. Specifically, he advocates a visitors' gallery system whereby ordinary people and members of the press can actually attend NPC sessions as listeners. Following the article is the translation of the motion to create the visitor's gallery system, which passed and was inaugurated with the standing committee of the Second Session of the Seventh NPC. It became part of the "Rules of Procedure" for the NPC in April 1989. The text of the motion was then published in the World Economic Herald, one of China's most open newspapers during the 1980s. It has since been shut down. The goal of the visitors' gallery was to enhance the transparency of the inner workings of the NPC by subjecting it to outside scrutiny. It was also Cao's intention that by subjecting the sessions to outside scrutiny, and by allowing citizens access to information on politics, they would become more interested in the political process and thus seek a nonviolent way to articulate grievances over economic reform.