China's NPC should better represent new social, economic strata - China Daily
The National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, should be readjusted to cater to the country's new economic and social situation, with studies underway to investigate the possibility of direct elections of deputies in big cities, the China Daily said in an editorial.
Direct ""grassroots"" elections at the village level have been in place for years, but the government has always shied away from introducing elections in urban areas.
The China Daily said in the editorial that ""conditions are not yet ripe for direct elections,"" but that it was feasible for studies to begin investigating the possibility of urban elections.
It said the system ""should eventually be promoted nationwide.""
China's NPC, often dismissed as a ""rubber stamp"" parliament, is still comprised of deputies representing people from six social and economic strata, including workers, farmers and cadres.
Urban residents are currently better represented than their rural counterparts - on average, a deputy based in the countryside will represent four times as many people as a deputy representing city-dwellers.
There is also a discrepancy between deputies representing the traditional state-owned sector and the booming private sector. The state-owned sector currently supplies a disproportionately large number of deputies to the NPC, the newspaper said, with their ratio exceeding 60 pct in some regions.
It said in-house research conducted during the previous NPC, which ran from 1998 to 2002, suggested deputies should also represent the commerce and service sector, enterprise management, technical and freelance professions and returned overseas Chinese.
The ultimate goal is to have each NPC deputy represent the same number of people, with deputies in each province or region supplying a basic number of representatives to the congress, plus an additional number of deputies, according to the actual provincial population.
China's media has been increasingly critical of the NPC in recent weeks, leading to newspapers and magazines being taken off the newsstands.
The news tabloid Xin Bao was recently shut down for including the NPC on a list of ""China's Seven Disgusting Things."" The newspaper had asked in a commentary why the NPC ""was so surprisingly amateurish and unprofessional,"" adding that the second thing it didn't understand was ""who chose these representatives?""
中国日报: 人大应更好地代表社会新经济阶层利益
《中国日报》发表的社论称，应该调整中国最高权力机构－全国人民代表大会的组成，以更好地代表新社会经济阶层的利益。
目前正在研究大城市人大代表直接选举的可能性。多年来中国只是在村民委员会的选举中采用直接选举的方法，城镇地区一直未能实施直接选举。
社论，直接选举的条件尚不成熟，但目前研究在城镇地区试行直接选举的可操作性是可行的。直接选举将最终扩展至全国。
中国全国人大由代表6个社会阶层的代表组成，其中包括工人、农民和干部。由于每个农村地区的人大代表所代表的居民数是城镇地区的4倍，城镇地区居民得到的人大代表服务更多。
报道提到，来自传统国有企业和新型民营经济的人大代表数量也不成比例；国有企业全国人大代表比例过大，部分地区这一比例甚至超过60％。
报道称，对上届全国人大代表的调查建议，增加代表商业、服务业、企业管理、技术人员、自有职业者和海外归来人士利益的人大代表。最终的目标是，实施每位全国人大代表能够代表几乎相等数量的人群，每个省区市拥有一定基本数量的全国人大代表，另外还有部分按照各地人口分配的人大代表。
