NPC deputies share stories of China’s development

The fifth session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature, opened on March 5. Some NPC deputies shared true stories that happened at the primary level in an interview before the opening meeting of the NPC, which mirrored the constant development and changes of China.

Chai Shanshan, a millennial deputy to the NPC, is a mail handler of China Post in Shanghai. He said during the interview that in early 2020, when COVID-19 just broke out, numerous couriers worked like busy bees for last-mile delivery.

“I brought their voices and suggestions to the NPC last year, after which the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, together with seven other relevant departments, issued a document on protecting rights and interests of workers engaged in new labor forms under the supervision of the NPC,” he told the interview, adding that it marked another time that people’s livelihood has become a will of the state.

“This year, I’m here with another motion about regulating outsourcing employment,” he said.

Another deputy named Wu Chen, an architect and planner with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design and the Shougang Group, introduced his motion of making urban design more people-oriented.

According to him, the waterfronts and hutongs, a type of narrow street or alley in northern China, near Shichahai, a historical scenic area consisting of three lakes in Beijing, were once congested due to commerce and tourism overdevelopment.

Thanks to elaborate designing and joint efforts made by all walks of life, a six-kilometer trail has been built along the lakes. Besides, Wu and his colleagues also made a renovation plan for a nearby market, which has turned the lakeside attraction into an ideal resort for Beijingers and visitors again.

Writer Ma Huijuan, an NPC deputy from Hongsibu district, Wuzhong, northwest China’s Ningxia Hui autonomous region, the largest community for ecological immigrants in the country, said she was just an ordinary rural woman before she became an NPC deputy.

She told the interview that she was born in a small mountain village in Ningxia’s Xihaigu, one of China’s most impoverished areas, where donkeys were once the only means of transport.

“I’ve been into reading since I was a child. However, I dropped out of school when I was 16 because of poverty. Four years later, relocation policies brought me and my fellow villagers out of the mountains, and we settled in Hongsibu. In our new home that sits by the Yellow River, we have embraced a good life,” the woman said.

NPC deputy Shapu Drolma from a local water supply company in Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, northwest China’s Qinghai province, introduced how her hometown has restored local ecology through grazing ban, wetland conservation and afforestation, greening once-barren mountains and refilling dried watercourses with lucid water.

“My hometown is entirely located in the Sanjiangyuan ecological preservation area, which is home to the headwaters of the Yellow, the Yangtze, and the Mekong Rivers. Therefore, apart from ensuring clean water supply for our village, we must make sure that the people in the middle and lower streams can also have access to high-quality water supply,” Shapu Drolma said.

She introduced that her village is making regular patrols along the rivers with drones and water quality sensors, so as to make sure the water is pure. “Thanks to our efforts to maintain ecology, our prefecture was honored as a national-level demonstration area for ecological progress,” Shapu Drolma noted.

“The only thing I have been doing in the past 35 years is making my welding skills better to strive for breakthroughs in welding techniques,” said NPC deputy Jiang Tao, a welding technician from Guizhou Aerospace Tianma Electromechanical Technology Co., Ltd. Jiang leads a national-level master workshop and a model worker innovation office.

“In September 2015, a Long March-6 carrier rocket sent 20 satellites into space, setting a record for the most satellites launched by a single Chinese rocket. The welding of the erector launcher, from spare parts to the main body, was done by me and my team,” Jiang said.

The man has trained over 300 outstanding welding technicians. It is because of such inheritance that China’s aerospace industry is always carried forward by younger generations.

“As an NPC deputy, I will work harder and fulfill the due responsibilities of a deputy, to carry forward craftsmanship, make skills inherited and nurture more capable craftsmen, and contribute my part to the realization of the Chinese Dream,” Jiang said.