The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitarycommunist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. This system is based on the principle of unified state power, in which the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is constitutionally enshrined as "the highest state organ of power." As China's political system has no separation of powers, there is only one branch of government which is represented by the legislature. The CCP through the NPC enacts unified leadership, which requires that all state organs, from the Supreme People's Court to the President of China, are elected by, answerable to, and have no separate powers than those granted to them by the NPC. By law, all elections at all levels must adhere to the leadership of the CCP.[1] The CCP controls appointments in all state bodies through a two-thirds majority in the NPC. The remaining seats are held by nominally independent delegates and eight minor political parties, which are non-oppositional and support the CCP. All government bodies and state-owned enterprises have internal CCP committees that lead the decision-making in these institutions.
The NPC meets annually for about two weeks in March to review and approve major new policy directions, and in between those sessions, delegates its powers to the working legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC). This organ adopts most national legislation, interprets the constitution and laws, and conducts constitutional reviews, and is headed by the chairman, one of China's top officials. The president represents China abroad, though since the 1990s, the presidency has always been held by the CCP general secretary. Elected separately by the NPC, the vice president has no power other than what the president bestowed on them but assists the president. The head of the State Council, the NPC's executive organ, is the premier. The CCP general secretary is China's leading official since the CCP is tasked with formulating and setting national policy which the state, after being adopted by the NPC or relevant state organ, is responsible for implementing.[2][3]
The State Council, also referred to as the Central People's Government, consists of, besides the Premier, a variable number of vice premiers, five state councilors (protocol equal of vice premiers but with narrower portfolios), the secretary-general, and 26 ministers and other cabinet-level department heads. It consists of ministries and agencies with specific portfolios. The State Council presents most initiatives to the NPCSC for consideration after previous endorsement by the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee.
China's judicial organs are political organs that perform prosecutorial and court functions. Because of their political nature, China does not have judicial independence. China's courts are supervised by the Supreme People's Court (SPC), which answers to the NPC. The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) is responsible for prosecutions and supervises procuracies at the provincial, prefecture, and county levels. At the same administrative ranking as the SPC and SPP, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) was established in 2018 to investigate corruption within the CCP and state organs. All courts and their personnel are subject to the effective control of the CCP's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission.[4]
Relationship with the Chinese Communist Party
The CCP constitution states that the party is the highest force for political leadership. The party's institutions overlap with government institutions and the party has authority over government decisions at both the local and central levels.[5]: 36 Senior government officials throughout the country are appointed by the CCP, and are mostly CCP members.[6] All government departments, state-owned enterprises and public institutes include CCP committees, from the village level to the national level. The CCP committees in government bodies supervise and lead the bodies, with the State Council legally required to implement CCP policies.[7][8] As outlined by the CCP constitution: "Government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west – the party leads them all."[6]
Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, there were proposals to increase the separation of the state and the party, especially advocated by more liberal officials such as Zhao Ziyang.[9][6] The proposals included abolishing CCP committees from some government departments, increasing the influence of the State Council, and having professional managers leader SOEs instead of CCP committees. These proposals were abandoned after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.[6]
On the relationship between the government and the CCP, James Palmer, writing for Foreign Policy, states that, "[t]he Chinese government is essentially the shadow of the Communist Party, moving as the party does, and consequently government roles matter far less than party ones."[10] According to The Economist, "[e]specially when meeting foreigners, officials may present name cards bearing government titles but stay quiet about party positions which may or may not outrank their state jobs."[11] According to scholar Rush Doshi, "[t]he Party sits above the state, runs parallel to the state, and is enmeshed in every level of the state."[12]: 35
The integration of the CCP and the state has accelerated under Xi Jinping, chairing eight party commissions that direct government bodies.[6] Under Xi, several government and party bodies have also merged, with one party organization having an external state government name under the one institution with two names system, further integrating party and the state.[6]
The Constitution of the PRC was first created on 20 September 1954, before which an interim constitution-like document created by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was in force. The second promulgation in 1975 shortened the constitution to just about 30 articles, containing CCP slogans and revolutionary language throughout.[citation needed] The role of courts was slashed, and the Presidency was gone. The 3rd promulgation in 1978 expanded the number of articles, but was still under the influence of the very-recent Cultural Revolution.[citation needed]
The current constitution is the PRC's fourth promulgation, declared on 4 December 1982, and has served as a stable constitution for 30 years. The legal power of the CCP is guaranteed by the PRC Constitution and its position as the supreme political authority in the People's Republic of China is put in practice through its comprehensive control of the state, military, and media.[13]
The National People's Congress (NPC) is the national legislature of China. With 2,977 members in 2023, it is the largest parliamentary body in the world.[14] Under China's current Constitution, the NPC is structured as a unicamerallegislature, with the power to legislate, to oversee the operations of the government, and to elect the major officials of state. Its delegates are elected for a five-year term through a multi-tiered electoral system. According to the Constitution, the NPC is the highest state institution within China's political system.[15]: 78
The NPC, elected for a term of five years, holds annual sessions every spring, usually lasting from 10 to 14 days, in the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square, Beijing. These annual meetings are usually timed to occur with the meetings of the CPPCC, providing an opportunity for the officers of state to review past policies and present future plans to the nation.
The NPC generally has a reputation of approving the work of the State Council and not engaging in overmuch drafting of laws itself. However, it and its Standing Committee have occasionally asserted themselves. For example, the State Council and the CCP were unable to secure passage of a fuel tax in 2009 to finance the construction of expressways.[20][21] Likewise, the Ministry of Finance has sought to institute property taxes since the early 2010s, but opposition from the NPC (as well as local governments) have prevented any property tax proposals from reaching the NPC's legislative agenda.[5]: 60–61 The NPC Standing Committee is more assertive than the NPC itself and has vetoed proposed laws.[15]: 79
The CCP Politburo Standing Committee consists of the government's top leadership.[5]: 55 Historically it has had five to nine members. As of 2024, it has seven members.[5]: 55 Its officially mandated purpose is to conduct policy discussions and make decisions on major issues when the Politburo, a larger decision-making body, is not in session. According to the CCP's constitution, the General Secretary of the Central Committee must also be a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee.[22][better source needed]
Ranked below the party's Politburo Standing Committee are deputy state leaders including the party's chief staff, vice premiers, and the party secretaries of China's most important municipalities and provinces.[5]: 55 Ministers and provincial governors are next in rank, followed by deputy ministers and deputy provincial governors.[5]: 55 Ministry director generals and sub provincial municipality mayors rank below this, followed by ministry deputy director generals and third-tier city mayors.[5]: 55–56 There are five ranks below these which reach to the base of the government and party hierarchies.[5]: 56
Power is concentrated in the "paramount leader," an informal title currently occupied by Xi Jinping, who heads the four most important political and state offices: He is the general secretary of the CCP Central Committee, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and President of the PRC.[24] Near the end of Hu Jintao's term in office, experts observed growing limitations to the paramount leader's de facto control over the government,[25] but at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping's term limits were removed and his powers were expanded.[26]
Under the PRC's constitution, the President of the People's Republic of China is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers.[27] However, since 1993, as a matter of convention, the presidency has been held simultaneously by the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the top leader in the one-party system.[28] The office is officially regarded as an institution of the state rather than an administrative post; theoretically, the president serves at the pleasure of the National People's Congress, the legislature, and is not legally vested to take executive action on its own prerogative.[note 2] The current president is Xi Jinping, who took office in March 2013.
The office was first established in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1954 and successively held by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi. Liu fell into political disgrace during the Cultural Revolution, after which the office became vacant. The office was abolished under the Constitution of 1975, then reinstated in the Constitution of 1982, but with reduced powers. The official English-language translation of the title was "Chairman"; after 1982, this translation was changed to "President", although the Chinese title remains unchanged.[note 3] In March 2018, presidential term limits were abolished.[29]
The State Council is the chief administrative authority and national cabinet of China. It is appointed by the National People's Congress and is chaired by the premier and includes the heads of each governmental department and agency.[7][30] The premier is assisted by several vice premiers, currently four, each of them overseeing a certain area of administration.[31] The premier, vice premiers and the State Councilors collectively form the inner cabinet that regularly convenes for the State Council Executive Meeting.[32]: 76–80 The State Council includes 26 constituent ministries, and officially oversees the provincial-level governments throughout China.[33]
Generally, the authority of government departments is defined by regulations and rules rather than law.[34]: 28 The State Council issues regulations on the forms of official government and CCP documentation which govern the level of authority, urgency, and confidentiality required by the document.[34]: 28 Official documents include ones which must be strictly implemented by lower levels of government (such as "Decisions" and "Orders"), ones which can be treated more flexibly (such as "Opinions" and "Notices"), and ones with less or more general content (such as "Letters" and "Minutes").[34]: 28
The Central Military Commission (CMC) exercises the supreme command and control over the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the People's Armed Police, and the Militia. It operates within the CCP under the name "Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China", and as the military arm of the central government under the name "Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China". Under the arrangement of "one institution with two names", both commissions have identical personnel, organization and function, and operate under both the party and state systems.[35] The commission is headed by the CMC Chairman.[36]
The Supreme People's Court is the judicial organ of the People's Republic of China and is subject to the control of the CCP's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission.[4]Hong Kong and Macau, as special administrative regions, have separate judicial systems based on British common law traditions and Portuguese civil-law traditions, respectively. The judges of the Supreme People's Court are appointed by the National People's Congress.[citation needed]
The governors of China's provinces and autonomous regions and mayors of its directly administered municipalities are appointed by the State Council after receiving the nominal consent of the National People's Congress (NPC). The Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions (SARS) have significant local autonomy including separate governments, legal systems, and basic constitutional laws, but must follow the central government in foreign policy and national security, and their chief executives are effectively picked by the CCP Politburo.
Below the provincial level, there are prefectures and counties. Counties are divided into townships and villages. While most are run by appointed officials, some lower-level jurisdictions have direct elections.
While operating under strict control and supervision by the central government, China's local governments manage relatively high share of fiscal revenues and expenditures.[39] Their level of authority and autonomy in economic decision-making is high, and they have played a major role in national economic development.[34]: 1 They do not have the right to make tax laws but may have the ability to adjust certain tax rates within boundaries established by the central government.[40]: 354
Through the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the municipal government regulatory mechanisms expanded, as did their capacity to regulate peri-urban areas.[41]: 81 The 1994 fiscal reforms resulted in the need of local governments to generate non-tax revenue, which they did in the form of revenues through land development and use fees.[41]: 82 This resulted in their increase in both administrative size and geographic size.[41]: 82 From 2002 to at least 2023, the cost of providing public goods has devolved to local governments from the central government and therefore local governments need to generate fees to provide public services.[41]: 82 Local governments are the key provider of public of goods in China.[42]: 149
Since 2014, the National New-Type Urbanization Plan has resulted in the consolidation of planning processes that were formerly distributed across different bureaucracies, such as urban and rural land use, tourism planning, and environmental planning.[41]: 87
Beginning in 2015, the central government allowed local governments to issue bonds to finance public capital spending for projects like infrastructure and hospitals.[40]: 354 The quantity of such bonds is set by the central government.[40]: 354 Local governments cannot issue bonds to pay for current spending, such as salaries.[40]: 354
China's civil service is divided into tiers.[43]: 147 The highest tiers (including department chiefs, deputy department chiefs, and section chiefs) have significant involvement in policy-making.[43]: 147
Policy development
After the Chinese economic reform, China has been characterized by a high degree of political centralization but significant economic decentralization.[44][45]: 7 The central government sets the strategic direction while local officials carry it out,[45]: 7 including developing the details of policy.[46]: 30 Academics Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry write that policy-making in China is influenced by the Chinese Communist Revolution, resulting in a policy approach that combined centralized leadership with intense mass mobilization, and that this mode of governance is defined by continuous experimentation and improvisation.[47]: 45 According to academics Jérôme Doyon and Chloé Froissart, the adaptive capacity resulting from a heritage of guerrilla warfare has made the CCP adept in dealing with uncertainty and has translated into a capacity to experiment first and then systemize the results.[48]: 2
New policies are often tested locally before being applied more widely, resulting in a policy process that involves experimentation and feedback.[49]: 14 This method of first implementing policy through local pilot testing was also used during the Mao era.[50]: 108 Generally, high level central government leadership refrains from drafting specific policies, instead using the informal networks and site visits to affirm or suggest changes to the direction of local policy experiments or pilot programs.[51]: 71 The typical approach is that central government leadership begins drafting formal policies, law, or regulations after policy has been developed at local levels.[51]: 71
State capacity
China has a high degree of state capacity.[52]: 49–51 Academic Thomas Heberer attributes China's state capacity to: (1) the legitimacy of its political system as viewed by its citizens, (2) the ability to exercise social control and regulation, (3) coercive resources, (4) the capacity to consult and collaborate with emerging social groups and organizations to balance conflicting interests, and (5) the ability to learn from failures and mistakes.[52]: 50–51
Budget
China's fiscal budget has four parts: general fiscal budget, budget for government funds, budget for operating income of state-owned capital, and social insurance budget.[40]: 353
The largest part is the general fiscal budget, which is a unitary budget that is allocated between central fiscal and local fiscal budgets.[40]: 353 The central government sets targets for its fiscal revenue and expenditures, as well as local government fiscal revenue and expenditures.[40]: 354
^The "Paramount leader" is not a formal title, that the leader is usually holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
^It is listed as such in the current Constitution; it is thus equivalent to organs such as the State Council, rather than to offices such as that of the premier.
^In Chinese, the President of the PRC is termed Zhǔxí (主席) while the Presidents of other countries are termed Zǒngtǒng (总统). Furthermore zhǔxí continues to have the meaning of "chairman" in a generic context.
^Natalie Liu (7 October 2022). "View China's Xi as Party Leader, Not President, Scholars Say". Voice of America. Archived from the original on 22 October 2022. Retrieved 7 October 2022. But Clarke and other scholars make the point that Xi's real power lies not in his post as president but in his position as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
^"How the Chinese government works". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 12 May 2018. Retrieved 12 May 2018. Xi Jinping is the most powerful figure in China's political system, and his influence mainly comes from his position as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
^Lovell, Julia (2019-09-03). Maoism: A Global History. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 445. ISBN978-0-525-65605-0. Although the party has long dominated — in theory and practice — the government of China (a dominance enshrined in the seventh paragraph of the preamble to the current constitution), in practice the intensity of its control has oscillated at different moments...in the history of the PRC.
^ abŠebok, Filip (2023). "China's Political System". In Kironska, Kristina; Turscanyi, Richard Q. (eds.). Contemporary China: a New Superpower?. Routledge. ISBN978-1-03-239508-1.
^Liao, Xingmiu; Tsai, Wen-Hsuan (2019). "Clientelistic State Corporatism: The United Front Model of "Pairing-Up" in the Xi Jinping Era". China Review. 19 (1): 31–56. ISSN1680-2012. JSTOR26603249.
^Wong, Chun Han (2023). Party of One: The Rise of Xi Jinping and China's Superpower Future. Simon & Schuster. p. 24. ISBN9781982185732.
^"Does Chinese leader Xi Jinping plan to hang on to power for more than 10 years?". South China Morning Post. 6 October 2017. Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 12 October 2017. If Xi relinquished the presidency in 2023 but remained party chief and chairman of the Central Military commission (CMC), his successor as president would be nothing more than a symbolic figure... "Once the president is neither the party's general secretary nor the CMC chairman, he or she will be hollowed out, just like a body without a soul."
^Wang, Yongsheng; Li, Yüping (2007). "Lijie Zhonggong Zhongyang Junshi Weiyuanhui de zucheng ji lishi beijing" 历届中共中央军事委员会的组成及历史背景 [The make-up and historical background of past iterations of the Central Military Commission]. Military History (in Chinese (China)) (6): 11–14.
^Kadochnikov, Denis V. (29 December 2019). "Fiscal decentralization and regional budgets' changing roles: a comparative case study of Russia and China". Area Development and Policy. 5 (4): 428–446. doi:10.1080/23792949.2019.1705171. ISSN2379-2949. S2CID213458903.
^Doyon, Jérôme; Froissart, Chloé (2024). "Introduction". In Doyon, Jérôme; Froissart, Chloé (eds.). The Chinese Communist Party: a 100-Year Trajectory. Canberra: ANU Press. doi:10.22459/CCP.2024. ISBN9781760466244.
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