I am a practicing lawyer from Beijing and 2018 is the 36th year of my career. Fortunately, I’ve also served as NPC deputy and/or CPPCC member in the past 15 years. When participating in political affairs in the capacity of a lawyer, I got an opportunity to experience a different life and improve myself. Working in two different capacities, I benefited a lot from trying to fulfill my duties in both capacities in various different ways. My life was enriched in this process. Working as NPC deputy and CPPCC member, in particular, I broadened my horizon, improved my capabilities, and more importantly, reinforced my belief of life.

To ensure due diligence as a NPC deputy or CPPCC member, in my opinion, one should meet the following requirements:

First, you must have sufficient time for your duty as an NPC deputy or CPPCC member. As we all know, the NPC and the CPPCC perform their duties mainly in two ways: meetings and investigations. deputies and members attend meetings to offer their opinions and submit proposals, and they carry out investigations to collect first-hand information to support their opinions, suggestions, and proposals. If a deputy or member does not have sufficient time for these activities, it will be impossible for him/her to fulfill the duty. Meanwhile, when we are working in such capacities, for us lawyers in particular, we must maintain a good balance between our obligations, responsibilities, and honor. Otherwise, the quality of our work will be impaired and we will not be able to fully honor our title of an NPC deputy or CPPCC member.

Second, there are some basic element in performing our duties. A precondition to due diligence is to be fully informed and this also serve to ensure the quality of our work. To be fully informed, we should read, watch, attend meetings, and carry out investigations. We will not be able to fulfill our duties if we fail to do this and base our words only on hearsays and intuitions. Moreover, we should train ourselves to perform our duties appropriately, be conscientious to think and to investigate, and be brave to criticize and to offer our own opinions. Keeping thinking helps you maintain the right direction. The good habit of investigation enables us to speak for the general public and present realities as they are. Being critical is how we lawyers give full play to our expertise when working as an NPC deputy or CPPCC member. By building our capacities, we will ensure that the opinions we contribute are more helpful to our country.

Third, our due diligence must be supported by our expertise. Working as an NPC deputy for ten years, I found that lawyers are highly valued as deputies because we are well-trained for legislation, law revision, and abolishment. Therefore, when we raise suggestions or proposals, we should back our words with our strong expertise as legal professionals, give full play to our abilities to identify and solve problems and to track progress, and let our specialties play their roles in every piece of advice we offer. As a lawyer and an NPC deputy or CPPCC member, it is important that we contribute to society and to our country with our past experience in the profession and our expertise. The NPC and CPPCC are excellent places for lawyers to make use of our professional capabilities.

Over the past years, I found we lawyers to be much better at identifying problems than at solving them. This is the reality and a problem perhaps all NPC deputies and CPPCC members should strive to overcome in performing our duties. We should have the courage to criticize, but more importantly, we should have the wisdom to contribute constructive ideas. Such wisdom is what we respected for. It is not so difficult to criticize but to contribute requires various capabilities. In my opinion, whether we have achieved due diligence as an NPC deputy or CPPCC member does not depend on whether our proposals or suggestions are accepted. Instead, the key point is whether we have truly think it over and over when trying to come up with a proposal and whether our proposals are firmly based on investigations and realities. The point is holding powers in our hands, we do not look on but take actions, and we do not regard performing our duty as a vanity job but as an opportunity to contribute. We must take our participation in political affairs seriously, not as something to show off.

As NPC deputies and CPPCC members, we must be brave to speak up but prudent with our words, and we must not stay silent. When I served as deputy to the NPC, I did an interview with CCTV which contained only one question: Have you ever voted against anything? I answered without any hesitation that I surely had. But I was prudent and cautious every time I did so. I must be complete sure about why I vote against a certain proposal. As a deputy, you may vote for or against anything. You have the right to do so. But it is important that every one of your vote should represent the people and truly contribute to the country. We you vote or speak in the capacity of an NPC deputy or a CPPCC member, you must always bear the best interest of the people in your mind. You should surely be appropriate, to the point and moderate when raising your opinions, but I belief it is more important that what you say is useful, helpful, and constructive. We carry people’s expectations and hopes on our shoulders and we have our responsibilities. As NPC deputies and CPPCC members, we must work for the wellbeing of our country and people, and in particular, we lawyers should play our roles in the building of a law-based country. In the coming five years, this is what we must do. It is our honor to be elected, but after being elected, the journey of performing our duties will never be easy. Let’s work hard.