On Monday, May 11, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC), released its legislative work plan for 2026 (Plan). The Plan was preliminarily approved by the Council of Chairpersons in December 2025 and finalized on April 20. It sets forth priorities for all aspects of the NPCSC’s legislative work in 2026, including the legislative projects slated for review or research this year. Other priorities concern conducting constitutional review of draft laws, improving legislative procedure, and publicizing its legislative activities, among others. As usual, we will focus on the list of legislative projects in this post.
Legislative agenda overview. The Plan schedules 34 bills for review in 2026: 15 that were already pending before the Plan was approved and 19 scheduled for an initial review. The main themes of this year’s legislative agenda include economic and financial regulation, social welfare and public services, criminal justice, and environmental and resource protection.
Completed projects. Because the Plan was initially approved in late 2025, it includes five bills that have since been enacted:
- Ecological and Environmental Code [生态环境法典] (adopted Mar. 12);
- Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress [民族团结进步促进法] (adopted Mar. 12);
- Law on National Development Plans [国家发展规划法] (adopted Mar. 12);
- revision to the Prisons Law [监狱法] (adopted Apr. 30); and
- Social Assistance Law [社会救助法] (adopted Apr. 30).
The following five bills underwent an initial review in accordance with the Plan:
- draft National Fire and Rescue Personnel Law [国家消防救援人员法] (Feb.);
- draft amendment to the Certified Public Accountants Law [注册会计师法] (Feb.);
- draft revision to the Law on the State-Owned Assets of Enterprises [企业国有资产法] (Apr.);
- draft revision to the Agriculture Law [农业法] (Apr.); and
- draft revision to the Water Law [水法] (Apr.).
In addition, the draft Healthcare Security Law [医疗保障法] and draft Cultivated Land Protection and Quality Improvement Law [耕地保护和质量提升法] went through a second review as planned.
Returning bills. The following eight bills, submitted prior to the Plan’s adoption, will return for further review in 2026. Notably, the Plan is the first legislative work plan to not assign returning bills to specific NPCSC sessions, likely to afford the legislature greater flexibility.
- draft Financial Stability Law [金融稳定法];
- draft revision to the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law [企业破产法];
- draft Procuratorial Public Interest Litigation Law [检察公益诉讼法];
- draft State-Owned Assets Law [国有资产法];
- draft Childcare Services Law [托育服务法];
- draft Antarctic Activities and Environmental Protection Law [南极活动与环境保护法];
- draft revision to the Banking Supervision and Administration Law [银行业监督管理法]; and
- draft revision to the Trademark Law [商标法].
New bills. The NPCSC also plans to review the following 14 bills this year, without setting any specific timetable:
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| New laws |
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Potential unenumerated projects. Like its previous iterations, the Plan leaves open the possibility that the NPCSC would need to consider other legislative projects in 2026 to accommodate new legislative needs, including to “further comprehensively deepen reform, develop new-quality productive forces, advance the high-quality modernization of national defense and the military, safeguard national security, and accelerate the development of the system and capacity for foreign-related rule of law.” Last month, the NPCSC considered such a project: a draft revision to the National Defense Mobilization Law [国防动员法].
Backup projects. The Plan concludes the NPCSC’s 2026 legislative agenda with a list of 22 “backup projects.” These are laws that most likely will be enacted eventually but are lower priority for now, so they are unlikely to come before the NPCSC in 2026. Of course, legislative priorities may shift during the year, and some backup projects may later be prioritized. (Bill pages are not always available for backup projects.)
In addition to the titled projects below, the Plan also directs research into “legislative projects on issues such as the fiscal and taxation system, agricultural support and promotion, governance of online violence, and the healthy development of artificial intelligence.”
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| New laws |
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Expiring reform authorization. In September 2023, the NPCSC extended a pilot program that has allowed Hong Kong and Macao lawyers to practice mainland law in nine cities within the Greater Bay Area after passing a special exam. The pilot as extended will expire on October 5. The NPCSC may further renew the pilot or may consider a bill to codify the program.
Gauging public opinion in lawmaking. In a passage on legislative procedure, the Plan calls for “improving the mechanisms for assessing public opinion before draft laws are submitted for review or released for public comment.” This language suggests the creation of a more institutionalized method to gauge likely public reactions—especially negative ones—to draft legislation before it is placed on the legislative agenda or disclosed for public consultation.
This initiative naturally brings to mind last year’s controversy over a provision in the revised Public Security Administration Punishments Law [治安管理处罚法] requiring the government to generally seal the records of public-security violations, including minor drug offenses. The legislature failed to anticipate this reaction and addressed it only weeks after the controversy arose—just days before the revised law was scheduled to take effect.
Ideally, the NPCSC would use the envisioned mechanisms to identify potentially controversial bills or provisions and proactively provide authoritative explanations to avoid misreadings and frame public discussion. We worry, however, that the mechanisms would instead reduce transparency in the legislative process. National laws already permit the legislature to omit pending bills from its public agenda and to withhold draft laws from public consultation—authority it has invoked with respect to politically sensitive legislation in the past. We hope that the NPCSC would see the irony of using public-opinion-gauging mechanisms to curtail public participation, and would instead adopt some of our recommended reforms to improve public engagement.