
Elections designed to give the partystate greater legitimacy

Party controls elections to prevent
dissent

Direct, secret-ballot elections at local
level
CCP allows the existence of eight
"democratic" parties.
 Membership is small and has very little
power
 Important advisory role to the party leaders
and generate support for CCP policies

CCP
CHINESE GOVERNMENT
PARALLEL HIERARCHY
PLA
Three parallel hierarchies
 Principle of dual role
 China's policy making is governed more
directly by factions and personal
relationships (guanxi)


Organized hierarchically by levels

The party has a separate constitution from
the government's constitution of 1982, and
its central bodies are:
› National Party Congress
› Central Committee
› Politburo/Standing Committee



Three branches - a legislature, an executive, and a
judiciary.
People's National Congress
The National People's Congress choose the
President and Vice President of China, but there is
only one party-sponsored candidate for each
position
Executive/Bureaucracy
 The President and Vice President
 The Premier

Bureaucracy

Chinese for patron-client relationships
› Think nomenclatura in the CCP

Helps to build contacts and power
› Can determine Politburo membership
among other things

President and Premier
(Prime Minister)
› President is head of
state with little
constitutional power,
but is sometimes the
General Secretary of
CCP
› Prime Minister is head
of State Council, or
ministers, and is in
charge of
“departments” of
government
They are elected for 5-year terms by
National Peoples Congress,
 They also serve on Central Military
Commission
 The CCP’s leader is the general secretary
and he is in charge of bureaucracy, or
Secretariat

Think of Russian Matrioshka dolls
 Top legislative body is National Peoples
Congress

› 3,000 members chosen by provincial peoples
congresses across the country
› They meet in Beijing once a year for a
couple of weeks to “legislate” for 1 billion+
people
 Pass laws; amend Constitution,
 On paper very powerful, but checked by Party
The National Peoples Congress chooses
a Central Committee of 200 that meets
every 2 months to conduct business
 Inside this is the Central Committee’s
Standing Committee which functions
every day

Parallel structure
 The National Party Congress is main
representative body of CCP, not people

› Has 2,000 delegates
› Select 150-200 people chosen for Central
Committee

Standing Committee of Politburo
includes president and prime minister,
plus closest associates, and the party
legislative “branch” and party executive
is joined with government executive

State Council
› Government Ministers and Premier carry out
the decisions made by National Peoples
Congress (or Politburo)
› Chinese bureaucrats are paralled by party
members assigned to their ministries

China has a 4-tiered "people's court" system
› Handle criminal cases and government working on
civil law codes

“People's Procuratorate"
› Investigates suspected illegal activity

Criminal justice is swift and harsh (capital
punishment is a bullet in the back of the head)

Human Rights organizations criticize China
› Not a rule of law system, rather a rule by law system

Hong Kong

Special
Economic Zones
(SEZs).

China trades with
Taiwan, but the PRC
views Taiwan as part
of China and Taiwan
does not
› But they want to
benefit from its
trade
Democratic reforms can be seen in these
ways:
› Some input from the National People's
Congress is accepted by the Politburo
› More emphasis is placed on laws and legal
procedures
› Village elections are now semi-competitive,
with choices of candidates and some
freedom from the party's control
› Hu Jintao, the President of the People's
Republic of China.