By Charles Hutzler

BEIJING, March 14, 1997 (AP) -- The political heirs to Communist party patriarch Deng Xiaoping made fresh vows of unity Friday at the close of a carefully scripted annual session of China's legislature.

The National People's Congress was the first political test for Communist party chief Jiang Zemin and other members of his collective leadership following Deng's death Feb. 19.

Premier Li Peng and Qiao Shi, head of the congress, delivered for Jiang, their presumed rival. Both renewed pledges to follow the policies set by the party with Jiang in control. And Qiao presided over largely uneventful voting by the 2,720 congress delegates.

Jiang did not address the congress' final session inside the cavernous Great Hall of the People. But he sat prominently on the dais, across the aisle from Li and behind Qiao.

"We can see that the current collective leadership with Comrade Jiang Zemin at its core enjoys the support of the entire Chinese people," Li said at a post-session news conference. "China enjoys political stability."

Much of the legislative session was spent passing laws to enhance that security.

Deng's successors must deal with increasingly violent independence movements in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China and Tibet, and the potential for labor unrest as rural migrants pour into cities where rusting state industries are laying off workers.

By overwhelming margins, legislators approved China's first defence law, which acknowledges a role for the armed forces in suppressing rebellions, and revisions to the 17-year-old criminal law. Those changes target separatism, terrorism and organized crime as well as political dissent.