Top legislature to enhance oversight

China's National People's Congress would step up oversight over the work of the government and judicial organs as well as budgets and final accounts, top legislator Zhang Dejiang said Sunday.[Special coverage]

"The important principle behind the system of people's congresses and the basic requirement of its institutional design are to subject the exercise of power by all state organs and their employees to constraints and oversight," he quoted President Xi Jinping as saying.

The NPC Standing Committee must perform its constitutional and legal duties of oversight and safeguard the unity, sanctity, and authority of the country's legal system, said Zhang, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, while delivering a work report at the annual session of the NPC.

In 2015, the Committee would facilitate the State Council's efforts toward carrying out administration in accordance with the law and the efforts of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) and the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) to administer justice in an impartial way, ensuring that laws are enforced properly and effectively, Zhang said.

The NPC Standing Committee would listen to and deliberate on government reports concerning the development of information technology and industrialization, pilot free trade zones, public cultural services, rural land contract relations, as well as medical and health care systems, Zhang said.

The SPC's report on judgments in administrative cases and the SPP's report on its oversight over the enforcement of penal decisions would also be reviewed, he said.

"Examining and approving government budgets and final accounts and overseeing the implementation of budgets are legally mandated powers of all levels of people's congresses and their standing committees," Zhang said.

We would listen to and deliberate over reports on the government's final accounts, auditing work, and implementation of budgets, and review and approve the central government's final accounts for 2014, he said.

A report from the State Council on strengthening the management of government debt would be reviewed and research on how to improve budgeting for state capital operations would be carried out, he said.