Politics of China

4 min readFeb 15, 2022

The People’s Republic of China is run by a single party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), headed by the CCP General Secretary who serves as the paramount leader of China.[2] State power within the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is exercised through the CCP, the Central People’s Government (State Council) and its provincial and local representation. The state uses Internal Reference [zh], secret documents produced by Xinhua News Agency, similar to the United States’ President’s Daily Brief. China’s two special administrative regions (SARs), Hong Kong and Macau, have independent multi-party systems and are separate from the mainland’s one-party system.

Aside from the SARs, the PRC consists of 22 provinces (excluding Taiwan Province and ROC-controlled Fujian), four directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing), and five autonomous regions (Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia).

The Chinese political system is authoritarian.[3][4][5][6][7][8] There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted and civil rights are curtailed.[9] Elections in China occur under a single-party authoritarian political system.[10][11][12][13] Elections occur only at the local level, not the national level.[10][14] China is among few contemporary party-led dictatorships to not hold any direct elections at the national level.[15] The competitive nature of the elections is highly constrained by the Communist Party’s monopoly on power in China, limitations on free speech, and government interference with the elections.[16][17] According to Rory Truex, “the CCP tightly controls the nomination and election processes at every level in the people’s congress system… the tiered, indirect electoral mechanism in the People’s Congress system ensures that deputies at the highest levels face no semblance of electoral accountability to the Chinese citizenry.”[18]

1Overview
2Typology
2.1Socialist consultative democracy
3Communist Party
4Government
5Local government
6Administrative divisions
7National armed forces
8State leaders
8.1Politburo Standing Committee
8.2Full Politburo members
9Elections
10Legal system
11Nationality and ethnicity law
12Politics of Uyghur ethnic minorities
13Foreign relations
14Foreign aid
15International disputes
15.1Territorial disputes
16International organizations
16.1United Nations
16.2Foreign media
16.3Non-governmental organization (NGO)
17Civil society
17.1Protests
17.2Advocacy
18See also
19Notes
20References
21Further reading

Overview[edit]

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the government in Beijing officially asserts to be the sole legitimate government of all of China, which it defined as including mainland China and Taiwan. This is disputed by the Republic of China (ROC) government since the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to Taipei in 1949, which underwent political reforms since then.

Each local Bureau or office is under the coequal authority of the local leader and the leader of the corresponding office, bureau or ministry at the next higher level. People’s Congress members at the county level are elected by voters. These county-level People’s Congresses have the responsibility of oversight of local government and elect members to the Provincial (or Municipal in the case of independent municipalities) People’s Congress. The Provincial People’s Congress, in turn, elects members to the National People’s Congress that meets each year in March in Beijing.[19][non-primary source needed] The ruling CCP committee at each level plays a large role in the selection of appropriate candidates for election to the local congress and to the higher levels.

Politics of China

Contents

Overview[edit]

Written by Caxec