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Wang Wenjing, 39, a private businessman and a National People's
Congress (NPC) deputy to the current NPC First Session, appeals to
the relevant authorities to help private business people to take
part in local election, as they have been playing a vital role in
China's economic development and social progress.
At
the current First Session of the 10th NPC, Wang, chairman of the
board of the Yongyou Software Co., Ltd., one of China's top
software manufacturers, said "some private business people referred
to me that they could hardly find any access to local
elections."
He
reminded organizers of local elections to pay heed to this matter,
saying that the people from private sector might regard their
legitimate voting rights as being overlooked.
Zhang Yanli, vice-chairperson of the Standing Committee of the
Beijing Municipal People's Congress, cited this somewhat impeded
avenue in local elections to complex procedures involved in
compliance with the Law on Election, which specifies that all
voters have to exercise their voting rights only once either in
their registered permanent residential areas or at their working
places. For this reason, Zhang added, migrant workers are not
entitled to voting unless they would be certified with documents
from the relevant authorities.
Along with rapid economic growth in the Chinese capital, Zhang
noted, the number of migrant people has been on the rise for the
past two decades, making it more and more difficult for the job to
organize the election. And Zhang would ask local legislatures to
attach still greater importance to this issue.
By
the year 2001, there had been 24.23 million registered individual
self-employed businesses in China including approximately 2 million
private firms, with a combined work force of more than 70 million.
Over the past two decades, private sectors' contribution to the
country's GDP has risen tremendously from less than one percent to
over 20 percent. And 55 self-employed entrepreneurs have been
elected deputies to the First Session of the 10th NPC.
(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2003)
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