The Shanghai People's Congress, comprising more than 850 deputies, is the city's legislative body that formulates laws and regulations, and makes proposals and suggestions to solve issues in citizens' daily lifes.
Since last year, the Shanghai People's Congress has made 38 proposals and 869 suggestions in every aspect, including residential property management, garbage sorting, urban security, protecting the rights and interests of senior citizens, preventing juvenile crimes, self-driving, cracking down on illegal loan sharking, protecting historic buildings, and supervising online food delivery platforms. A record 71.1 percent of suggestions have been adopted.
The congress has made all these proposals and suggestions public online, and established a tracking mechanism to check the progress of how the proposals are dealt with in real-time.
In this section, our reporters interviewed some pedestrians on Shanghai's streets and asked what issues they are concerned most about regarding the city. Let's see what they said.
Different neighborhoods charge differently (for different services), such as the fee for an entrance access card. In my neighborhood they charge 20 yuan. I think it's important to establish a standard fee.
Many of the hair salons encourage their customers to get a membership and top up their membership cards in advance. Personally, I don't trust businesses that I have never been to before. I think the government needs to regulate the beauty industry more strictly and apply more severe punishments. Also, the government should check the qualifications of a business and close down unqualified businesses.
It is quite common that many businesses require advanced payment, but I don't really trust them. If they go out of business, I probably won't get my money back. The government needs to tightly manage these businesses to protect the interests of customers.
In Shanghai, some Metro lines are very crowded during the rush hours, and it's difficult for passengers to get on. On top of that, the security checks in some stations is quite loose, which may pose some potential security issues.
My daughter goes to some interest-oriented classes in formal education institutions. However, they raise the price sharply every year. I also worry that my daughter may be harmed in school sometimes. I think the government should take all means to prevent violence, such as by applying more severe punishment.
I drive most of the time. Sometimes I find people jaywalking, which is very dangerous both for drivers as well as pedestrians. I think the government should apply more punishments so that people don't jaywalk.
The key point in the lift of Shanghai’s growth quality is to improve land management, especially land allocated for manufacturing. I suggest closely monitoring the efficiency of land use.
Shanghai should formulate new industrial standards to guide companies in the updating of their products and services. At the same time, it shouldn’t be completely carried out through administrative orders.
The city should roll out a set of new standards to define technological companies that have core competitiveness, regarding the proposed Nasdaq-style board for technology companies. Meanwhile, there should be a reasonable exit system to guarantee the quality of the board.
Today I really got to appreciate the sheer amount of work involved with running a mega city like Shanghai. One aspect that really impresses me is the sheer amount of research that’s done at the grassroots level into any proposed new laws or regulations and how they will not only work, but affect ordinary people — one of the methods of research is taking onboard suggestions from 22,000 residents. That really goes to show that consideration isn’t just given to issues from afar, but that people’s realities are really taken into account before any new changes are made.
