The second plenary session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference opened on Sunday.

In China's unique political system, the role of these CPPCC members should never be underestimated. The CPPCC members are expected to speak their minds about everything concerning the development of the country, and their opinions on particular issues or work should be handled in as earnest a manner as possible.

In 2018, the standing committee of the CPPCC National Committee convened special meetings on poverty alleviation, a task the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have attached particular importance to as they seek to lift all of the remaining poor out of poverty by 2020. To make preparations for these meetings, four specialized CPPCC committees organized fact-finding trips to extremely impoverished regions. As a result, the CPPCC members put forward 233 motions for targeted actions against poverty last year, and many of them were accepted or taken into consideration in the making of particular policies.

On the development of the non-State-owned economy, the CPPCC National Committee also organized forums and special workshops in 2018 to identify where the efforts of the central government needed to be put to stimulate the development of non-State-owned enterprises.

As many CPPCC members are prominent figures in various fields, their knowledge and experience in their areas of expertise give them unique perspectives that enable them to offer insights into the problems in their particular fields. As a result, the motions they put forward should be paid particular attention to.

That explains why it is required that every motion put forward by CPPCC members must be delivered to a relevant department, which must then reply in a timely manner explaining the response to the motion.

With the advancement of mobile telecommunications, the CPPCC committees at all levels have started to organize online video forums or panel discussions that make it possible for CPPCC members all over the country to have meetings at any time without taking the trouble to travel to the capital or a particular city just for a meeting.

As a result, quality fact-finding investigations have become all the more important, as they provide hard facts to support the motions put forward at the CPPCC sessions.

With the general public increasingly well-informed through the use of social media, CPPCC members need to ensure they have a much better understanding of their fields so they can offer deeper insights. This can only be realized by effective fact-finding missions facilitated by their own experiential knowledge and expertise.