1. China’s top legislature plans to study a dedicated law governing its “filing and review” system, which requires government regulations, local legislation, judicial interpretations and other normative documents to be examined for constitutionality, legality and appropriateness [para. 1][para. 3]. The NPC Standing Committee placed this study on its 2026 legislative agenda to consolidate separate review systems run by the legislature, government, supervisory authorities, courts and procuratorates [para. 2].
2. The system has corrected local rules that restricted the education, employment and social-security rights of relatives of criminal suspects or convicts; excluded people with criminal records from minimum-livelihood assistance; and required disabled motorized-wheelchair users to hold local household registration before registering vehicles [para. 4].
3. Zhang Xiang, a Peking University Law School professor and member of the Legislative Affairs Commission’s expert committee, said the planned law would likely serve principally as constitutional procedural legislation, standardizing procedures as the separate review systems are brought under a single statutory framework [para. 5]. He noted that while the mechanisms have developed rapidly since the 19th Party Congress in 2017, the rules remain scattered and lack systematic integration [para. 6]. A December 2023 NPC Standing Committee decision laid the groundwork for the dedicated law [para. 7].
4. A central challenge is determining which body holds ultimate authority to coordinate reviews involving multiple agencies [para. 8]. Zhang said the new law must clarify how agencies interact and who has final authority [para. 9]. Zheng Lei, a professor at Zhejiang University’s Guanghua Law School, added that the 2023 decision mainly sets rules for the NPC Standing Committee’s own review procedures and doesn’t directly bind local people’s congresses or incorporate the review rules of government and supervisory bodies [para. 10]. A dedicated law would need to consolidate provisions across these systems into an integrated framework [para. 11].
5. The system developed over more than four decades. A 1979 law required provincial-level regulations to be filed with the NPC Standing Committee and the State Council [para. 13]. The 1982 Constitution established an explicit constitutional basis [para. 13]. The 2000 Legislation Law devoted a chapter to the process, formally establishing the system, while a 2006 supervision law brought judicial interpretations within its scope [para. 14]. 2015 amendments allowed NPC special committees and Standing Committee working bodies to initiate reviews, and 2019 work rules further specified filing scope, deadlines and responsibilities [para. 15].
6. The December 2023 decision called for ensuring every document is filed, every filing is reviewed and every error is corrected [para. 16]. In a December 2025 report, the Legislative Affairs Commission first proposed studying a dedicated filing-and-review law [para. 16]. According to the NPC’s website, China now has seven branches — the Communist Party, people’s congresses, governments, military, disciplinary-inspection and supervisory bodies, courts and procuratorates — sharing review responsibility [para. 17].
7. Zhang said the system’s effectiveness depends on making correction powers more binding. The correction process proceeds through four stages: communication, written review opinions, decisions to correct or revoke, and generally binding effect [para. 18]. The key is ensuring revocation powers are genuinely used rather than leaving cases stuck in preliminary stages [para. 19]. In 2020, the Legislative Affairs Commission reviewed taxi regulations in five cities, concluding that local household-registration requirements for taxi drivers violated higher-level laws and constituted serious employment discrimination; the cities subsequently removed the restrictions [para. 20][para. 21].
8. All 31 provincial-level jurisdictions have established databases containing more than 380,000 documents from provincial, municipal, county and township state organs [para. 22]. Zhang said the databases support the principle that every document should be filed, but older records were often collected under unclear standards, making it difficult to determine which institution should initiate review; more standardized and broadly applicable rules are needed [para. 23].
9. Zhang said the proposed legislation signals that filing and review is evolving from a discrete administrative task into a more independent and systematic constitutional-supervision system [para. 24]. However, he stressed that filing and review is an important instrument of constitutional supervision but not its entirety — review of draft laws is separately addressed in the Legislation Law. In the longer term, China could consider a dedicated procedural law for constitutional review coordinated with a filing-and-review law through broader legislative planning [para. 25][para. 26].
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