By Zhu Ningning

BEIJING, June 15 -- On the afternoon of June 10, China passed a law on protecting the status, rights and interests of military personnel. The legislation was adopted at the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), and will be implemented since August 1 this year as scheduled. The new legislation includes 71 articles in 7 chapters, serving to regulate the protection rules to the honor and reputation of service members, define the basic system for guaranteeing their benefits, improve the pension and preferential treatment system, and clarify the legal accountability mechanism.

A special chapter dedicated to “military personnel status” is added.

In reviewing the entire legislative process, the draft of the legislation was significantly revised during the deliberation stage by the NPC Standing Committee. The first version draft submitted for deliberation only contained 48 articles, which has been added to 71 in the final draft. What is particularly worth mentioning is that a special chapter dedicated to the “status of military personnel” has been added on the basis of the first review during the whole review process. “The main considerations for this revision are multifaceted”, said Guo Linmao, director of the Social Law Office of the Legal Work Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

“In the process of deliberation and solicitation of comments by the NPC Standing Committee, it’s been universally proposed that as China’s first law on military personnel’s status, rights and interests, it should put emphasize on the position of legislation and make special regulations on the unique status, and the duties and missions of the military personnel,” Guo added.

“The purpose of formulation in such structure and content is to make the whole society fully recognize that military is a profession which deserves wide respect across the entire society, and meanwhile fully understand that the lofty status and special rights and interests enjoyed by the service members are matching with their special missions to take, special obligations to fulfill, subjection to special restrictions, and special sacrifices to make,” said Guo.

Paying close attention to the demands of service members at the grassroots level is emphasized.

During this year’s annual session of China’s national legislature, a female naval aviator, also deputy to this NPC, proposed to make special regulations in protecting service women in light of their characteristics in physiology and other aspects when enacting a law on protecting status, rights and interests of military personnel. Upon receiving the proposal as feedback, the Legal Work Committee of the NPC Standing Committee immediately searched for relevant information, while carefully studying relevant laws and policies. As a result, relevant provisions on the protection of the rights and interests of service women were added.

The law on protecting the status, rights and interests of military personnel is directly related to the vital interests of military personnel and their dependents. Considering the fact that service members have to undertake heavy tasks in training for combat readiness and may not have spare time to give opinions online, during the legislative process, the legislature has taken various measures and resorted to multiple channels to communicate with service members face-to-face and listen to their real opinions and demands, while revising and improving the draft.  

On March 12 this year, the Legal Work Committee of the NPC Standing Committee, with the assistance of the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC), invited representatives of frontline troops and their families from the remote and difficult-to-reach areas in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Heilongjiang to attend the video conference.

 The service members put forward some opinions and suggestions given their actual difficulties. According to a soldier, the troops stationed in the most remote and difficult-to-reach areas can seldom get together with their families throughout the year, so it’s been hard for their families to prove their identity as military dependents without the military personnel present, and thereby cannot be preferentially treated or enjoy relevant priority while visiting parks, museums and other places. In response to this, the Legal Work Commission conducted a careful study together with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, the CMC Political Work Department and other relevant departments, and put forward the regulation that the families of military personnel can enjoy the preferential treatment as stipulated by laws and regulations with certificates issued by relevant departments.