The National Library of China and Its Legislative Reference Service

Abstract:

The paper provides information on China's legislative system and legislative status since China adopted the policy of reform and being open to the outside world. It covers the setting up of a special organization, selection of staff members, form of service. It shows the importance, necessity and possibility of the NLC to carry out legislative reference services to the National Legislature.

Unlike other countries in the world, there has not been a parliamentary library specially serving the National People's Congress in China. It is the National Library of China (NLC), that assumes the responsibility of offering documents reference services to the National Legislature. The NLC has been consistently taking the legislative reference work for the National Legislature as one of its important tasks, and has done a great deal of work in this respect. This paper will expound our legislative services in detail.

In order to enable the reader to know something about the legal system of China, the paper will describe firstly China's legislative system and general conditions of legislation.

Part one: China's legislative system

The legislative system of China is a multi-structural one. It is based on the premise that the highest organ of state power centrally exercises the National legislative power . It authorizes the highest organ of state administration, as well as the local organs of state power, namely the provinces, provincial capitals, relatively big cities (according to the State Council document, Tangshan, Datong, Baotou, Dalian, Anshan, Fushun, Jilin, Qiqihaer, Qingdao, Wuxi, Huainan, Luoyang, Chongqing were designated as "relatively big cities"). It also authorizes the organs of self-government of the national autonomous areas and grants them the right of enacting normative documents subordinate to the Constitution and law. According to the provisions of article 57 and 58 of the Constitution, The National People's Congress is the highest organ of state power, and The National People's Congress and its Standing Committee exercise the legislative power of the state and have the right to enact laws.

Meanwhile, the State Council, the highest organ of state administration, has the right to enact administrative rules and regulations according to the Constitution, laws and authorization given by the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee.

Since China is a country with a vast territory, a large population, and is unbalanced in economy and culture in various places, the Constitution, and the Law of Regional National Autonomy, and the Law on Organization of Local People's Congresses and Local People's Governments at Various Levels and its amendments have stipulated that the people's congresses in the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government and their Standing committees can adopt regulations, which must not contravene the Constitution and the law and administrative rules and regulations, and they shall report such local regulations to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for the record.

The people's congresses of capitals of provinces and autonomous regions and relatively big cities ratified by the State Council may adopt local regulations in the light of the current local situation and needs. The regulations shall be submitted to the standing committees of the people's congresses of the provinces or autonomous regions for approval before they go into effect. The people's congresses of the national autonomous areas have the power to enact regulations on the exercise of autonomy and other separate regulations in the light of the political, economic and cultural characteristics of the nationality or nationalities in the areas concerned. The regulations on the exercise of autonomy and other separate regulations on autonomous regions shall be submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for approval before they go into effect. Those of autonomous prefectures and counties shall be submitted to the standing committees of the people's congresses of provinces or autonomous egions for approval before they go into effect, and they shall be reported to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress for record. The legislative bodies of special administrative regions in Hong Kong and Macao exercise the legislative powers prescribed by the Basic Law concerned.

In a country like China, which is populous and unbalanced in economic development, the above-mentioned multi-structural legislative system centrally led by the central organ of state power is in complete accord with the conditions of China, and has proved to be successful.

Part two: An outline of the current legislative status in China

Since China has carried out the policy of reform and is open to the outside world, the Chinese people's mental attitude, values, social connections, as well as life style have changed a great deal. The new order of a socialist commercial economic system is taking shape step by step in the field of economy, and democracy and a legal system have been set up, which are developing steadily. The concept of administering the country according to law is becoming a common perception of the Chinese people as a whole. The Legislative work in our country has entered its golden age, and has gained unprecedented achievements and progress.

During this period of time, the legislative bodies of our country have given priority to legislative work, and have enacted large quantities of laws concerning economy and culture, reform and openness to the outside world, while protecting social order and civil rights.

For the establishment of the state organs and the state system, many laws were enacted or amended, such as:

Constitution

• Electoral Law of the National People's Congress and Local People's Congresses
  
• Organic Law of the National People's Congress
  
• Rule of Procedure of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
  
• Organic Law of State Council
  
• Organic Law of the Local People's Congresses and the Local People's Governments
  
• Organic Law of the People's Courts and the People's Procuratorates
  
• Law of Regional National Autonomy
  
• Organic Law of Villagers Committees
  
• Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
  
• Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region.

In addition, many Laws relating to the administration of social life and the protection of social order have been enacted such as:

• Penal Code
  
• Code of Criminal Procedure
  
• General Rules of Civil Law
  
• Code of Civil Procedure
  
• Law of Marriage
  
• Law of Succession
  
• Regulations on Maintenance of Public Order
  
• Law of Assembly and Demonstration, and so on.

On the aspects of protecting and safeguarding the civil rights:

• Law of Trade Union
  
• Law of Labor
  
• Law of State Compensation
  
• Code of Administrative Procedure

have been enacted one after another.

On economical and cultural matters:

• Law of Economic Contract
  
• Law of Trademarks
  
• Law of Patents
  
• Law of Corporations
  
• Law of Statistics
  
• Law of Accountancy
  
• Law of Environmental Protection
  
• Law of Cultural Relics Protection
  
• Law of Copyright

have been enacted respectively. Meanwhile, a lot of laws relating to international economic activities, such as the Law of the People's Republic of China on Sino-Foreign Joint Ventures, and the Law of Foreign Economic Contract, have been enacted. According to statistics for the period from 1979 to 1990, the National People's Congress has enacted and adopted more than 94 laws apart from the Constitution in effect, passed 21 decisions concerning amendments and supplements to laws, and passed 52 decisions and resolutions relating to legal problems. In the same period, the State Council formulated more than 500 administrative regulations; the local people's congresses and its standing committees have also drawn up about 2000 local statutes.

During the period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan of National Economic and Social Development just completed, the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee continued to give priority to the legislative work and drafted a five year legislative plan for the Standing Committee of Congress of the Eighth National People's Congress. As the plan indicates, "in order to meet the need to establish the socialist market economic system, priority should be given to economic legislation, and special attention should be paid to enacting laws in connection with the subject of the market economy: maintaining the market order, establishing macroscopic regulation, improving social security" and "striving for the formation of a legal framework for the socialist market economy during the term of office of this Congress, protecting and promoting the establishment of a socialist market economic system".

From January 1, 1991 to October 31,1995, the National People's Congress and its Standing Committee have deliberated and passed 109 laws and decisions concerning legal problems, which make up more than one third of the total quantity of legislation since 1979. On February 28, 1995, seven laws were passed during the twelfth session of the Standing Committee of the Eighth National People's Congress, more than in any session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress since the founding of the P.R.C. Among the laws passed, about 32 are concerned with the market economy, and there are some amendments to and repeals of laws that are unsuitable to the needs of the development of a socialist market economy, as well as some new laws. Meanwhile, the State Council has enacted 171 administrative regulations; the local people's congresses and its standing committees have also deliberated and passed some 2000 local statutes. Now we can say that a socialist legal system based on the Constitution has already been set up in China.

It is an important task and function for the National Library of China to provide an active legislative reference service, to meet the needs of reform and open policy and active legislative activities. Meanwhile, the advantages of the quality of the personnel and the documentary resources of the National Library also make this service possible.

Part three: The legislative reference service in NLC

In October 1991, Wang Hanbin, the vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress met Professor Ren Jiyu, the Director of NLC, and Jao Shuan, research librarian and Director of Reference Department of NLC. They exchanged opinions on the problems concerning the document inquiry service offered by NLC to the legislative work of Congress. Wang asked the NLC to set up a special department to offer legislative reference service to the National Congress, and expected NLC to take on two tasks at present: one is short term legislative inquiry; the other is middle- and long-term research of legislative problems. As a result, the Law and Policy Inquiry Section specially serving the National People's Congress was set up in the Reference Department of the NLC in November 1991. Soon after the Section was set up, a delegation of NLC composed of Tang Shaoming, Executive vice-Director of NLC, and Jao Shuan, Director of the Reference Department, visited Japan to observe the legislative services in the National Diet Library. After the delegation returned, many conferences were held, attended by the experts and the departments concerned, to discuss the nature of the task to be performed, staff selection and the work to be carried out in the early stages of the Section.

On the basis of the experiences of reference services of the National (or parliamentary or Diet's) Libraries abroad and considering the situation in our country, the participants thought that it is a principal task for the Section to offer document reference service to the National People's Congress. Meanwhile, the Section can also offer the same services to the National Administrative and Judicial Department and general readers. Its main tasks are as follows:

• To offer the document reference service to the National People's Congress, the State Council and ministries and commissions under the State Council as required in the course of passing legislation. The documents include laws and other background materials at home and abroad.
• To carry out legislative research and other temporary research tasks in the light of the legislative plan.
• To collect, process and compile bibliographies of primary and secondary legal materials of China and foreign countries; compile abstracts, special subject bibliographies and catalogues; and databases; carry out research on special subjects.

With regard to the internal structure of the Section, originally we planned to set up a reference room, and a reading room for members and deputies to the Congress, and several inquiry and research rooms. Because of the inadequate level of human and material resources, the Section can provide only the document reference service, and there is no reference and reading room and only one inquiry room at present. In this way, we do not have to do any selecting, cataloguing and reading or pay funds. The stack collection is our main resource.

In the selection of staff members, we are more concerned about their level of knowledge in relation to the work of the Section. As a major component of the social sciences, legal science contains a good many branches and interdisciplinary subjects. In addition, some new subjects are springing up as a result of social development. We have to pay attention to their depth of subject knowledge during staff selection. Meanwhile, we give priority to selecting some staff members in special fields in a planned and focused way on the basis of the developmental trends of National politics and the economy and the requirements of legislation. For example, staff members who have knowledge in economics and foreign languages should be recruited as the legislation in the economic field is increasing day by day along with the extensive reform of the economic system in our country and the expansion of intercourse between China and other countries.

At present, there are five librarians in our Section. Among them three specialize in law, others are in international politics, philosophy and library science respectively. Now we are considering the recruitment of more staff members in other fields so as to meet the needs of our work and make the staff's range of subject knowledge more adequate. Individually, we lay emphasis on our staff members' personal knowledge and their ability to solve practical problems, and work is assigned accordingly. We think that as law librarians, in addition to possessing a relatively high level of professional knowledge and a foreign language, they should possess relatively ample knowledge concerning their work such as philosophy, politics, economics, history and even technology. Meanwhile, they should also have the ability to solve practical problems with a sound knowledge of librarianship and be able to use it skilfully. In the area of legal reference service, law librarians should know all kinds and forms of compilation and publication of primary and secondary materials of legal documents in China and foreign countries, and those collections in our library, and should also be able to use various reference books, such as bibliographies, indices, citators, dictionaries, manuals and encyclopedias to find out materials. As King George III of England put it, a lawyer could not be expected to know the law but only where to look it up. Perhaps we do not require that every law librarian knows law well, but it is important for them to know how to find out the materials readers require.

To achieve the above-mentioned aim, we have carried out various training sessions in a planned and focused way in the light of the characteristics of a legal reference service. They include the learning of law and legal documents, the use of computers, and so on. Now all of our staff members can solve inquiry problems proficiently after training and practice.

In the legislative reference service, we have adopted mainly the following services:

I: Answering Inquiries

Reference services in the library have been considered as a kind of passive inquiry for documents, but it is one of the important services in the legislative reference service, because it can offer direct services to readers. In the course of drafting laws, legal experts often need to use a library for looking up a wealth of data, but they frequently have no way of doing it in the face of the huge volume of materials. For they are not familiar with the collection of books and the finding tools and the method of retrieval. This all requires law librarians to offer some necessary help to them by means of answering questions, advising them in the use of reference books or finding tools, training them in the use of the library's collections so as to help them to find relevant materials more promptly and accurately.

There are three forms of inquiry in our legislative reference service, namely, telephone inquiries, written inquiries and face to face inquiries. Generally, oral inquiries are relatively simple or familiar because librarians can answer them immediately or on the same day. Written inquiries are relatively complicated or difficult, and can be answered within three days, or may even take a week.

In practice, we need to know in detail, firstly, the aim, demand, scope, kind of language and document, and year of inquiry; secondly, we should analyse the nature and subject of the problem so as to determine the scope, kind, way of retrieval, and subject keywords to retrieve the document, and to select finding tools accordingly; thirdly, we have to look for materials and compile them into bibliographies and then offer them to readers for selection; fourthly, we need to locate the books and periodicals, and make photocopies as required by readers; finally, the inquiry is completed. Those materials which are not in our library collection or in other libraries in China, we can obtain through the interlibrary lending system. If the materials cannot be found in China, we usually ask the International Cooperation Division of our library to obtain them from the foreign embassies in China and Chinese embassies in foreign countries. For example, in our legislative inquiry on the draft of the Law of Administrative Supervision and the Law of Declaration of Personal Income, we got relevant materials from the embassies of the Republic of Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, and Germany in China, and the Chinese embassy in Malaysia.

II: Compiling Bibliographies and Indices

One of the important services in the legislative reference service is the compilation of bibliographies and indices in a planned and focused way appropriate to the legislation to be enacted. Just like other research, legislative work also requires the collection of lots of data. By compiling bibliographies and indices, it may be easier to reveal and show the collection in our library, and provide the drafting department with reference tools for acquiring materials promptly and accurately. These bibliographies and indices are not general ones, but are special catalogues with an emphasis on certain legal subjects, in which they reveal and show the collection of books on special subjects as the result of our research.

Up to the present time, our Section has compiled dozens of bibliographies and indices in special subjects such as Index on the Systems of Foreign Parliaments, Catalogue on the Law of Antitrust, Catalogue on the Law of Social Relief, and so on, according to the requirements of the legislative bodies. These kinds of catalogues and indices on special subjects generally include several aspects as follows: firstly, a list of monographs; secondly, a list of articles; thirdly, a list of relevant laws and regulations at home and abroad. All catalogues mentioned above are both in Chinese and in foreign languages (mainly in English). Our experience in this sort of work has proved that this kind of work has played a positive role in improving the speed and quality of the legislative reference service and the utilization ratio of our collection, and reducing repetitious and unnecessary work. In recent years, traditional manual work has been changing quietly as we have been making greater use of computer technology in the library. In order to meet the needs of a changing society, we have also tried to use computers in compiling and managing bibliographies and indices. The advantages of doing it in this way are obvious, for they can save much trivial and boring manual work, save room, and facilitate their management, usage and preservation.

III: Special Subject Service

The special subject service is a kind of legislative reference service, in which a designated staff member is engaged in document inquiry service from beginning to end. In this kind of service, we make full use of the collection of books in the library and retrieve information on books from a wide range of sources, and do our best to locate materials, and then compile the materials retrieved into an index or catalogue or abstract on the special subject for the drafting department to select and use. Although the time this service takes is relatively long and the materials are voluminous, its effect is relatively good, because there is a staff member fully responsible for it.

IV: Research on Special Subject

It is far from sufficient for us to rely only on answering inquiries or compiling catalogues and indices in the legislative reference service. It is necessary for us to do more in-depth research, analysis, synthesis, and compilation of documents in the light of legislative requirements. In this respect, we designate some staff members to take charge of certain countries and regions according to their professional knowledge and foreign language, and to carry out some research on the legal documents of the countries and regions they are responsible for. We think that the law librarians should not only know legal documents, including their types, editions, publishers, design and development of publications, and main reference books, but also analyze, sort out the materials according to the requirements, and compile bibliographies and indices, and write essays for the purpose of providing readers with information on documents systematically. In this respect, on the basis of research on the library laws of other countries, we started in 1995 a research project under the Ministry of Culture. The title of this project is "A Comparative Analysis of Library Laws at home and abroad".

V: Setting up databases

In the legislative reference service, we often meet the problems of a lack of legal data, and inadequate processing. It is an arduous task for us to search for relevant materials. In order to solve these problems, we have decided to compile a bibliographic database that is simple and convenient to use. It can reflect the collection in our library. The name of the database is A database of the titles of the laws and regulations of China and foreign countries in the collection. We plan to complete it during the period of the Ninth Five-Year Plan for our library.

The creation of this database is the main work of our legislative reference service. We are in the early stages of working on the contents and the method of providing the service. There is a lot of work to be done to broaden and expand our legislative service. We shall reflect on what we have experienced in our work and learn from the good practices of national libraries of other countries, and thus strive to do better in our own legislative service.