Suggestions and proposals from the country’s top legislature and the top political advisory body have made great contributions in solving problems that mostly related to people’s lives in 2017, such as better bike-sharing regulations, senior officials said.

Liu Xiaoming, vice-minister of transport, said in a news briefing organized by the State Council Information Office on Feb 9 that the development and the regulation of shared bicycles is one topic that drew the most attention from deputies of the National People’s Congress and members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference last year.

“In the past year, we received a total of 14 suggestions and proposals themed on improving and better regulating the bike-sharing business. Many of them are of great value,” Liu said.

He said that bike-sharing, appearing as a new norm in 2015, saw robust development in the past two years and has boomed nationwide. But it has also led to challenges to urban management, such as congested city sidewalks.

Many of the suggestions and proposals focus on properly controlling the number of bikes put into the market, more regulated shared-bicycle parking and stricter and comprehensive management of users’ deposits.

Liu said that in order to better collect information on the issue, the ministry has held a handful of seminars on improving shared bicycle businesses and invited corporate leaders and experts in the field to discuss the issues.

In August, the State Council issued guidelines to regulate bike-sharing services, making clear a number of regulations in bike-sharing development. Liu said the guidelines were drafted based on advice and input from the deputies and public opinions.

He said the suggestions and proposals have also contributed to improving ride-sharing businesses. So far, more specified and tailored regulating measures on ride-sharing business have taken place in 200 cities across the country.

In the past five years, the Ministry of Transport has dealt with a total of 3,603 suggestions and proposals, and the satisfaction rate from lawmakers and political advisers reached 99.2 percent, Liu said.

Zhang Feng, spokesman of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology who also attended the news briefing, said those suggestions and proposals contributed to the implementation of the “Made in China 2025”strategy last year.

“Last year, we managed to draft and issue a total of 11 supporting guidelines for the ‘Made in China 2025’ strategy through suggestions and proposals,” he said.

The State Council’s executive meeting on Feb 7 noted that in the past five years, 58,773 suggestions and proposals were handled by the State Council. In 2017, the State Council dealt with 7,471 suggestions, or 89.4 percent of the year’s total; and 3,665 proposals, or 87 percent of the total.