Disability on the Table at Shanghai’s ‘Two Sessions’

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Political leaders and advisors from Shanghai have tabled several proposals during the annual meetings of the municipality’s top legislative and political advisory bodies, which concluded Wednesday.To get more news about Two Sessions 2021, you can visit shine news official website.

Delegates of the Shanghai People’s Congress and members of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) put forward the proposals during the city’s “two sessions,” or lianghui. They were focused on improving the city’s economic and social development.

The proposals are now being passed on to relevant government departments for further consideration. Here’s our run-down of some of the suggestions put forward at the meetings:Lu Jingbo, a CPPCC member and lawyer with Shanghai-based River Delta Law Firm, on Saturday submitted several labor rights-related proposals. He suggested the current Labor Law should give a clearer definition of working hours, as the current legislation puts limited constraints on “996” working culture, a term referring to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. He said companies making their employees work overtime should be given hefty fines and more strictly supervised.

Lu also proposed setting up a legislative system for better defining death from overwork, which would help determine liability and compensation.

Earlier this month, the sudden death of a young employee for Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo shed light on overtime culture — which had once led to developers protesting on code-sharing platform GitHub — pervasive at some domestic startups and tech companies.Eight CPPCC members have jointly called for setting up a “long-term mechanism” to crack down on surrogacy. The proposal suggests establishing designated hotlines and work groups on messaging app WeChat with the aim of encouraging community workers to report such cases.

Last week, actor Zheng Shuang’s rumored surrogacy in the United States raised heated discussion on Chinese social media. Surrogacy is illegal in China, though there are some unlicensed agencies that offer such services illicitly.Qiu Suo, a CPPCC member, submitted a proposal with two other political advisors to set up a public frozen egg bank in the Lingang Special Area of Shanghai’s free trade zone. According to the proposal, this would help women — especially cancer patients who become infertile due to treatment — store their eggs.

The country does not yet have a frozen egg bank, and domestic law stipulates that only a woman with a valid marriage license may freeze her eggs, although activists and academics have long been fighting for equal reproductive rights for single women. In late 2019, a 31-year-old woman sued a Beijing hospital for allegedly refusing to freeze her eggs because she was unmarried.