Compared with previous years, more stress was put on the supervisory role of the National People's Congress in the work report delivered by Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.

Supervisory power is one of the most important functions granted by the Constitution to the country's top legislature, and how to exercise such power not only relates to the implementation of the Constitution and the law, but more importantly determines the vitality of the country's people's congress system.

The NPC Standing Committee has strengthened its supervision over enforcement of the country's laws and introduced more innovations in this regard, signaling a shift in approach to this role.

Take 2016, for example. Of the six law enforcement inspection campaigns launched by the NPC Standing Committee, its working teams organized several secret inspections on enforcement of the Law on Road Traffic Safety nationwide, including the overloading of trucks, substandard electric bicycles and insufficient rural traffic facilities, and gained first-hand information that otherwise would not have been gleaned. Online investigations and on-the-spot questionnaires were also adopted to get a full picture of the problems existing in the enforcement of the law.

Aside from its supervisory role, the NPC Standing Committee has also pushed local people's congresses to strengthen their supervision over the enforcement of the laws. For example, targeting the problems the environmental protection law has encountered in its implementation, the NPC Standing Committee has urged local governments at various levels to submit to same-level people's congresses and their standing committees annual reports on local environmental conditions and realized targets for environmental protection to bring them under the scrutiny of local people's congresses and the public.

Admittedly, people's congresses' supervisory role is still under certain restrictions from a number of factors, such as insufficient power of supervision over the supervised and unfamiliarity with the area being supervised, but these are problems that can be gradually addressed in the future.