The Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature, started its 38th session on Dec 27, 2022 in Beijing. Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), delivered a briefing on the draft amendment to the Administrative Procedure Law during the session. 

The draft of the revised law involves the optimization of the provisions on the jurisdiction of the intermediate people's court in first instance cases, and of those on petition for administrative case retrials. 

In his briefing, Zhou affirmed the role of the current Administrative Procedure Law in resolving administrative disputes, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons and other organizations, supervising and supporting the administrative organs to perform their duties according to law, and promoting law-based governance. 

According to Zhou, the SPC was authorized on Aug 20, 2021, to pilot the reform on the duties of the courts at four levels in itself and in the people's courts in 12 provinces and municipalities directly under the central government, including Beijing and Tianjin. 

The pilot reform has since achieved multiple goals, such as more efficient litigation service for the parties,  administrative disputes resolved in a fair, efficient and substantive manner at the grassroots, and the procedures for retrial petition improved, all of which suggest that it’s necessary to amend the current law, he noted.