Transcript Slide 1
Party controls
Direct elections are held at the local
level
Direct, secret-ballot elections at local
level.
CCP allows the existence of eight
"democratic" parties.
Membership
Important advisory role to the party
leaders.
No independent democratic parties
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, nominated
by CCP’s National Party Congress
They also serve on Central Military
Commission, which oversees the PLA
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
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
› It chooses a Politburo of 12 people to run party’s
day to day business
› Many of these people work in Secretariat so
Politburo chooses a Standing Committee of 6
headed by General Secretary (Thus merging
executive to legislative)
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 Prime Minister
carry out the decisions made by National
Peoples Congress (or Politburo)
› Chinese bureaucrats are paralled by party
members assigned to their ministries
› In spite of centralization, provincial and local
ministries have had to adapt national
policies to local needs
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 system campaigns.
Human Rights organizations criticize China
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun.“ - Mao
The People's Liberation Army
encompasses all of the country's
ground, air, and naval armed
services.
Important influence on politics and
policy.
The second half of Mao's famous quote
above is less often quoted:
"Our principle is that the party
commands the gun, and the gun
must never be allowed to command
the party."
This propaganda poster represents life in the "Red Army"
- the military under Mao before the People's Republic of
China was formed in 1949.
During the 1970s and 80s the
government didn’t have money to
modernize Army so fended for itself
› It ran hotels, construction companies,
factories that produced pirate copies of
everything, satellite dishes
By 1990s government began controlling
the Army and its activities
Economic reforms
Demand for political power and civil
liberties?
Will contact through trade mean that
China will become more like their trading
partners?
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 was Chosen as General Secretary of the
Communist Party of China on November 15,
2002
Became President of the People's Republic of
China on March 15, 2003, following his
election by the National People's Congress,
thus replacing his predecessor Jing Zemin.
He is the first party chief to have joined the
Communist Party after the Revolution over 50
years ago
Claims to have a photographic memory and
tends to have moderate views.