GUANGZHOU -- Li Yanhua vividly recalls a heated debate between farmers and village officials over whether members of the rural community living away should be entitled to collective economic dividends.

The discussion was intense because the outcome would be forwarded to the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

"Through the local legislative outreach office mechanism, grassroots voices can be conveyed directly to the top legislative authority," said Li, who works at a legislative outreach office in the city of Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, south China.

NETWORK

The establishment of local legislative outreach offices across the country was first proposed at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2014.

A decade later, the NPC Standing Committee has set up 45 local legislative outreach offices, in addition to a network of over 7,300 such offices nationwide for the provincial and city-level legislatures.

The mechanism has ensured the direct representation of public opinions in lawmaking, a highlight of China's whole-process people's democracy.

Sun Zhenping, deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, noted that this expansion has "facilitated people's orderly participation in the national legislative process and enriched the practice of whole-process people's democracy."

The Hongqiao sub-district office in Shanghai was one of the first four local legislative outreach offices set up in 2015. Its first task was to gather public feedback on the draft Anti-Domestic Violence Law.

Wu Xinhui, director of Shanghai KM Law Firm, participated in the process. At the time, she was handling a case involving a paralyzed elderly man abused by his daughter. Wu suggested that the Anti-Domestic Violence Law should include provisions to protect the elderly.

"Seeing my recommendation incorporated into the final law was an exciting moment," Wu said.

From 2015 to July 2024, more than 30,500 suggestions on 185 draft laws, legislative work plans and review work were submitted through local legislative outreach offices, of which over 3,300 had been taken.

PEOPLE'S VOICES

"Legislation has always seemed like something grand and out of reach, something we weren't qualified to participate in, let alone see our suggestions be included in legal texts," said Hu Feiyang, a management official with an industrial park in Heping County, Guangdong Province.

As a veteran of the industrial park, Hu made suggestions for a regulation aimed at promoting the high-quality development of Guangdong's manufacturing sector.

When the regulation came into effect in March this year, Hu found that his suggestion for differentiated evaluation of industrial parks based on actual development situations had been incorporated into the regulation.

"I felt a strong sense of pride seeing that the whole-process people's democracy in action," Hu said.

Liang Yingyan, an official with the Hongqiao sub-district office in Shanghai, said it was important to hear the voices of ordinary people as the top legislature already has lots of expert resources.

Tan Huosheng, a professor at Tsinghua University, noted that any comprehensive democratic process requires the participation of people from diverse backgrounds.

This inclusiveness extends to foreigners living in China. Simon Lichtenberg, the Danish CEO of Trayton Group, once attended a meeting held by the Hongqiao legislative outreach office soliciting suggestions for the revised Company Law.

"I found it fascinating that a foreigner could make suggestions on a Chinese law," said Lichtenberg, adding that he later learned that his suggestion on employee participation in board meetings had been adopted.

"Of course, this may not be the view of just one person, but the key point is that this wasn't just for show. Genuine feedback was sought," said Lichtenberg, who has lived in Shanghai for over 30 years.

Lichtenberg was impressed by the process, during which staff from the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee found people relevant to different laws in communities across the country and gathered their opinions through the efficient and effective system.

Before adoption, each law requires several rounds of deliberation and public feedback from ordinary citizens as well as legal experts, Lichtenberg said. "This is exactly democracy."