In recent years, the standing committee of the Ankang municipal people's congress in Shaanxi province has taken people's benefits as a top priority and endeavored to deepen democracy in all walks of life through the good deeds of local deputies.

The congress strives to improve deputies' abilities through processes such as election, training and management to make sure that they can fully serve people's needs and answer their calls.

Zhao Mingcui, a deputy to the National People's Congress and a rural postman in Zengxi town, Ankang city, is a typical example.

In the past few years, she has submitted more than 30 proposals on issues related to people's livelihoods such as strengthening financial and social assistance for the disabled, adding the Xi'an-Ankang and Wuhan-Shiyan high-speed railways into the nation's transport network, opening the Ankang-Hanzhong high-speed train line, increasing investment in infrastructure construction in impoverished mountainous areas and strengthening provision of rural doctors. 

"People choose me as their deputy, and I should represent their needs. It is an inescapable responsibility to speak for the Ankang people," she said. 

Another example of high-quality democracy is the deputy liaison station in Hanyang town, Hanyin county, in Ankang. 

The station has become a "bridge of hearts" where local deputies collect public sentiments, reflect residents' opinions and relieve people's worries. 

Recently, it held a face-to-face event to solve the problems raised by local deputies such as building rural revitalization projects and giving funds to construct the main road.    

Ten town-level people's congress deputy liaison stations have been built in Hanyin since May, and are working with the county's "321" grassroots mechanism to create a communication system for locals that is more convenient. The system has become an effective way to speed up people's democracy to take root in the whole process.

Other efforts include constructing liaison stations to contact the masses, platforms to perform deputies' duties and places for study, communication and echoing of people's views.

2021 is the industrial project construction year determined by Ankang. The standing committee of the Ankang people's congress has held several symposiums to discuss strategies to promote industrial projects. 

Driven by a series of hard-core measures, the leaders of the standing committees of the people's congresses in 10 counties and districts of Ankang have secured 110 industrial projects, and more than 9,300 deputies to the people's congresses at all levels took the initiative to join the main battlefield of boosting industrial projects and co-sponsoring 795 enterprises.

On April 9, six livelihood projects including the environmental protection and governance of centralized drinking water source areas in Xunyang, a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Ankang, were included in the annual plan after a differential vote by 173 deputies. And the differential voting has achieved full coverage at the two levels of city and town in Xunyang. 

"The system of voting for projects related to people's livelihoods represents a big step for the high-quality democracy in the whole process. As long as it is closely related to the people, we must boldly explore," said Zou Shunsheng, a local deputy. Full coverage of the voting system will be achieved at the city, county, and town levels by 2022.

At present, 55 towns in six counties of Anyang have completed the pilot work of the voting system. A total of 2,249 people's livelihood recommendations has been collected and 1,673 candidate projects have been voted on, with 1,458 of them agreed for implementation.

The standing committee of the Ankang municipal people's congress aims to thoroughly implement the whole process of people's democracy in areas such as environmental protection, face-to-face interviews and legal examinations in law enforcement inspections.