China's top legislature Monday started deliberating the abolishment of the controversial re-education through labor system and relaxing the one-child policy, two among a raft of motions that analysts believe were introduced as a result of growing public discontent over these long-standing issues.
The bi-monthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) will run until Saturday.
The State Council submitted a bill which seeks to allow couples to have two children if either of them is an only child for the NPC Standing Committee to read.
The new policy will be launched in some provincial-level regions in the first quarter of 2014, China Central Television reported Monday.
Elaborating the bill at the session, Li Bin, minister in charge of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said Monday that the adjustment will pave the way for the country to allow all couples to have two children when conditions are ready.
The State Council also submitted a motion to abolish the decades-old re-education through labor system, which allows detention for up to four years without an open trial.
Yang Huanning, vice minister of public security, said Monday the State Council will organize departments to take on the work required by the annulment of the re-education system, including setting free those still in labor camps, reassigning police in charge of re-education and changing the camps' use to other purposes.
Both the easing of the one-child policy and the annulment of re-education through labor were stated in a comprehensive reform package passed at a key Party plenum in November.
Public discontent in the policies has manifested after a handful of high-profile cases regarding re-education highlighted that it had become a method abused by officials to detain petitioners. Under the auspices of the family planning policy, it was revealed that some pregnant women were forced to undergo abortions.
"It's a result of long-standing public pressure and experts' intervention after a single controversial incident occurs," Chen Jiaxi, an associate professor of political science from Shenzhen University, told the Global Times, adding this forced the government to listen to the public.
President Xi Jinping said in September that problems could bring pressure for reform, and reform is deepened during the process of solving the problems.
Meanwhile, as the public finds it difficult to sue different levels of government, a revision to the Administrative Procedure Law, which went into effect in 1990, is also high on the agenda of the NPC session.
Xin Chunying, a deputy director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, said Monday the law will be amended for the first time amid complaints by citizens, who say that it is difficult to file cases against government bodies or for them to be heard, while it is also difficult to enforce verdicts which favor citizens.
When citizens, legal personnel or other organizations have disputes with governments or governmental staff, governments are unwilling to be defendants and courts are reluctant to accept and hear such cases, leading many citizens to try to solve their disputes through the letters and calls system, better known as petitioning, Xin said.
The draft amendment disclosed Monday claims that governments should neither intervene nor obstruct courts from filing and hearing such cases.
The amendment expands the range of rights infringement cases that should be accepted by the courts.
Even though the pattern of public opinion-driven reform can hopefully be a trend, Chen said it should not be the way to solve all policy problems.
"The government should take the initiative and hold a foward-looking view when making policy adjustments," Chen said, noting that excessively relying on reforms forced by public opinion can just make policymakers focus only on solving specific issues.
Li Danyang, a public administration scholar with Beihang University in Beijing, echoed Chen's view, saying that if the government waits until a problem develops to a tipping point, so that then a policy should be urgently changed, it will cause much damage and may hurt the government's credibility.
The government should take a long-term view and make comprehensive plans on policy adjustment, while tailoring reforms in response to the public's concerns, Li noted.
Xinhua contributed to this story