Not just rubber-stamping: understanding the amending role of the Chinese legislature with bill text reuse

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent work challenging the “rubber stamp” view of authoritarian legislatures demonstrate that they are important arenas for policymaking. Yet their amending function remains understudied. To what extent is draft legislation modified in authoritarian parliaments? Why are some bills amended more than others? This article addresses these questions in the Chinese case, using a dataset covering 167 bills adopted by the National People's Congress or its Standing Committee from 2008 to 2022. I assess the degree of bill change by comparing bill content before and after parliamentary treatment with a text reuse method. Results show a moderately high level of amendment activity, with noticeable variations across bills. I argue that the amending role of the Chinese legislature serves a crucial mechanism for integrating and coordinating bureaucratic interests. I find that bills are modified to a greater extent if more ministerial and provincial stakeholders are involved within the legislative arena. This article provides systemic evidence supporting the power-sharing theory: legislative institutions compensate for the executive-level deficiencies and help manage intra-elite relations in policymaking. It does not confirm the influence of public opinion, casting doubt on the bottom-up account of bill change.