Score-ranking bulletins with name rolls on are no longer an embarrassment to Shanghai school-aged youngsters.

Millions of Shanghai students owed their gratitude to one fellow teenager after the metropolis newly adopted a regulation prohibiting schools to use bulletins as an impetus to stimulate competition for higher scores.

Eighteen-year-old Gao Jianling was among 21 students representing their peers to voice their concerns at a public hearing organized by the municipal legislature last October.

Gao's proposal was deliberated by the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, the legislature, when it solicited public opinions on the draft regulation on the Protection of Underage People.

The adoption of his proposal in the regulation might have a profound influence on Gao's understanding of democracy in China's legislative process.

His proposal was fully considered and hotly debated by the municipal legislators and then made into law, making it the first case of the legislature's incorporation of the opinions of underage persons in the city's 27-year-old legislation history.

Public hearings are now popular in the drafting of regional and national laws. "Letting people's voices be heard" has gradually become an authentic practice in modern Chinese legislation.

When China's top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) solicited public opinions for revising the draft law on property rights in early July, over 10,032 submissions were received via the Internet, mail and the media.

It was the 12th law for which the legislature introduced a nationwide public solicitation mechanism in the law drafting period.

Public opinions were openly solicited on a smaller scale in China's legislation starting in the late 1990s. It was first experimented with in the drafting of laws relevant to people's lives.

Since then, the Chinese public has shown a great interest in participating in the country's legal construction.

On the revision of a clause in the Law on Property Rights concerning disposing of unclaimed properties, Beijing citizen Wang Dexi, said in his proposal that the ownership of these properties had better be "rearranged by the state, and the profits from the rearrangement should be used for charitable purposes," rather than simply "left to the state."

Research fellow with the Ministry of Justice Liu Wujun said that the obligatory mode of public solicitation in legislation signifies the start of sweeping reform.

The inter-departmental formula for making laws has made it difficult for the public to get their voices heard. In typical Chinese law making, government-proposed draft versions are submitted to legislative bodies, which often make a few revisions on the wording before passing them across the board.

Xie Shengwu, rector of the Shanghai Jiaotong University, said that the conventional law-making formula left room for certain departments to be biased in drafting laws and evade public supervision.

The NPC has decided to make a big stride forward in legislative reform. It announced to hold the first public hearing for the legislation of a national law. "All citizens above the age of 18 and with a regular income can apply to participate in the hearing on the revision of the draft law on individual income tax next month," it said in a public announcement.

Source: Xinhua