China to make sweeping changes in local govt

Press, 19 June 1979, Page 9

China to make sweeping changes in local govt

NZPA-Reuter Peking China’s Parliament began meeting yesterday for the first time in 16 months to approve several new senior Government posts and sweeping changes in the country’s local government and legal systems. The agenda for the meeting of the National People’s Congress was handed to Chinese and foreign journalists in Peking on Sunday at an unprecedented news conference with Ji Pengfei, a vicechairman of the body’s standing committee. The gathering, expected to last about two weeks, will also hear a report on the Government’s work by the Prime Minister (Mr Hua Guofeng) and reports on the State economic plan and Budget for 1979. Mr Ji said that a number of new Vice-Premiers and N.P.C. vice-chairmen had been nominated, but he named only the former Mayor of Peking, Peng Zhen. He has been put forward as an N.P.C. vice-chairman.

Mr Peng, one of the most prominent victims of China’s

turbulent Cultural Revolution in the 19605, was rehabilitated earlier this year and made a chairman of the N.P.C.’s legislative affairs commission. Mr Ji said that no demotions of existing officials would come before the N.P.C. for approval. On local Government, Parliament will approve abolition of all remaining revolutionary committees — once hailed as one of the great achievements of the Cultural Revolution — and replace them with local governments. The demise of the committees will complete a process launched at the last meeting of the N.P.C. in February and March last year when they were abolished except for territorial administrations. Factories, schools, enterprises, and other institutional units at that time switched to a system of appointing directors chosen for their managerial and other professional skills rather than their political talent. The “people’s Government” which replace the

committees would be answerable to new standing committees of “people’s congresses” at various levels, Mr Ji said.

The country also planned to establish direct, multicandidate elections at county level and below, although indirect elections would continue for higher governing bodies.