BEIJING: On a sunny spring day last month, villagers and officials in Chitang village, Taojiang county, Central China’s Hunan province, gathered in a tidy courtyard. The topic of discussion was how to further expand the market for the village’s main products — tea-seed oil and bamboo.
Gao Ya, secretary of the Communist Party of China branch in Chitang, listened carefully and noted the villagers’ ideas. Earlier this month, she took their opinions to Beijing, about 1,300 km away, for the annual two sessions. The recently concluded first sessions of the 14th National People’s Congress and the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference offer a window into China’s whole-process people’s democracy, which involves a population of over 1.4 billion from 56 ethnic groups. At the annual gatherings, over 5,000 national legislators and political advisers — ranging from farmers to State leaders — sit together in the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing to deliberate on bills or discuss affairs of State, pool their wisdom and bring the Chinese people together to forge ahead.
“Whole-process people’s democracy is the defining feature of socialist democracy — it is democracy in its broadest, most genuine and most effective form,” President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has said.
Gao, 33, was elected as an NPC deputy in January at the annual session of the Hunan Provincial People’s Congress. Making her debut at the national legislature, she submitted suggestions on innovating the bamboo industry and improving the construction of forest roads.
“We will focus on developing our special industries to make the villagers more prosperous,” she said.
Shen Changjian, an NPC deputy from Linli, a county in Hunan, cares more about agricultural modernization. “We need to develop smart agriculture and deepen innovation in the seed industry,” the 55-year-old vegetable grower told media.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
