The Internal Structure of China's Government

[eacao]

China is not technically a federation; it is a unitary socialist state. There are two overarching strata to the Chinese system of government — the nation’s Government proper (called the PRC’s Central Government) and the China Communist Party with the latter being senior. There is not a formally recognised analogue to this structure in the West, so it is the purpose of this essay to explicitly describe the topology of China’s system of Government and discern the procedure by which directives from the summit are executed on the ground.

The nation’s Government is comprised of a unicameral legislative body, called the National People’s Congress (NPC), which is headed by the NPC’s President — somewhat analogous to the Speaker of the House in the Congress of the United States. The formal executive branch in China is the State Council, lead by the Government’s chief executive, Premier Li Keqiang. This position is de jure (though not de facto) analogous to the office of the President in the United States -- head of the executive branch. As with the legislative and executive branches in the West, the NPC legislates and the State Council acts. The Supreme People’s Court (SPC) rounds out the third branch of Government with the SPC being headed by the President of the Supreme People’s Court and its Judicial Committee being manned by Judges. Note that unlike in the Anglophonic democracies, neither the President of the SPC nor the other judges possess the authority to invalidate laws passed by the NPC that run counter to a higher law (akin to a Constitution in the West). That power is vested in the China Communist Party’s Standing Committee.

The China Communist Party is superordinate to the Central People’s Government in all respects. The Party decrees and the State obeys. Of the three strata of the Party that will be discussed, the Central Committee is the largest and lowest. 205 full members and 171 alternate members sit this chamber with many also holding seats in the NPC and State Council — thus an intimate integration between Party and State is inseparably upheld. Each year, the Central Committee convenes a Plenum to discuss policy and play a consultative role for the higher rungs. From the Party’s Central Committee, an elite council of 25 high-ranking Party members are elected to the Party’s Politburo (a portmanteau of “Political Bureaucracy") to wield greater and more centralised power. Whereas the broader Central Committee assembles once per year, the Politburo gathers regularly to conduct their work. This body engages in more executive functions than the dialogical Central Committee and takes on the role of implementation. The final organisational rung is the Standing Committee, comprised of the seven hierarchs that hold suzerainty over all of China. At its apex sits Xi Jinping — Chairman of the Standing Committee and all-powerful autocrat to 1.4 billion individuals.

Thus we have a clear delineation between the bodies of the State and the Party organs that stand above the State. The NPC (legislature), the State Council (executive), and the Supreme People’s Court (judicial) go about their dutiful business of managing the country for the Standing Committee. The China Communist Party holds overlordship over the unitary socialist nation and through decrees, centrally plots out the strategic goals for all of society to pursue. Within the CCP, the Central Committee forms the base, the Politburo the elite, and the Standing Committee the pinnacle. The next question concerns the mechanisms by which the CCP exercises control. How are directives from un high implemented below?

The default protocol sees policies formulated in the Politburo or Standing Committee, then handed down to the NPC for encoding in explicit legislation, and finally delivered to the State Council for actioning. But there also exist more flexible avenues by which policy direction can be meted out to Chinese society. There are three noteworthy classes of instruments that the CCP uses to direct the nation: (1) Central Leading Groups (CLGs), (2) Joint Party-State Bodies (JPSBs), and (3) Party Committees in Enterprises (PCEs).

Central Leading Groups are formed from high-ranking Party officials, members of Government, military figures, and other movers-and-shakers within China. These are somewhat ad hoc bodies that are formed around a particular policy area and play a key role in formulating and coordinating policy for the nation (for example, the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms). They sit high on the pyramid of Chinese politics and are strategic in nature. This coordination aspect makes them rather interesting to foreign eyes. These fora of Party technocrats and stakeholders from the breadth of society engage in centralised decision-making so that lesser structures can discharge the work. Unaccountable to the citizenry of China, they rule like a Curia Regis.

Joint Party-State Bodies are more formal and long-lived arrangements than the ad hoc CLGs, but sit subordinate in the pecking order. Similar in modus operandi to leading groups, Joint Party-State Bodies are stood up to translate Party desires into state policy. Besides formality and longevity, the difference between CLGs and JPSBs seems to be in loftiness — CLGs are strategic in nature whereas JPSBs are of a lowlier character and engage with the structures of national Government (the NPC and State Council) to guarantee Party control in stately affairs.

For more nuanced control, the Party leans on Party Committees in Enterprise (PCEs). Employ three CCP members and a company will establish a Party Branch. Employ forty members and a Party Committee is set up. The role of the PCE is to keep Party wishes forefront in corporate decision-making. Corporate activities should align with the broad societal objectives invented by the Leading Groups, which plot the course of the country, and to this end PCEs keep the company ‘honest’ (or humbled, at any rate). But the input of the PCE extends beyond ensuring company alignment with Party dictates — they also carry weight in manipulating corporate governance and personnel decisions. It’s not enough to abide, you must be.

But one final instrument is being rolled out to extend the reach of the Party not only to the organisations that inhabit the nation (both governmental and corporate) but also individuals. The final frontier of totalitarian control is the social credit system that rules the life of an individual by carrot or stick. Plata o plomo, as Pablo said — the obedient receive a carrot and the defiant get the stick.

And so we have a high-level view of the totalitarian system in the People’s Republic of China. Three branches of Government and the Party that commands it. Through Central Leading Groups, the Party decides the fate of the nation. Through Joint Party-State Bodies, these decrees are codified into the explicit structure of society. Through Party Committees in Enterprise, corporations are compelled to align with Party standards of societal ideals, corporate governance, and personnel selection. Through the social credit score, dissent can be snuffed out once and for all.

[DouglasTheKing]

I can say just I am still wondered how unlike federations, China operates as a unitary socialist state, with the Central Government and the Communist Party playing crucial roles...

[Ozzie guy]

I disagree on China being socialist.

1976 leaders of the Marxist faction (gang of 4) arrested after Maos death.
One of whom Mao's wife epsteined in prison.
Cultural revolution forcefully ended.
Peoples communes Forcefully ended.
by 1978 "Moderate" Hua Guofeng replaced by Deng Xiaoping.
Guaranteed employment, social SafetyNet's (Iron Rice Bowl) dismantled.
Market Reforms and privatization's.
West Loves China and welcomes them into Neo liberal era.
Modern China larps as socialist most of the country is privatized with the % of the economy in the private sector still growing.
Literal billionaires in the communist party.

When I was a baby Marxist I was tricked into supporting China which I regret.

[eacao]

Central planning is a transient phase in socialist states because it leads to market failure and centralised Governments, which have difficulty restraining spending and get themselves into financial trouble. Nazi Germany, for example, experienced all manner of market failures on account of price and rent caps, rationing, and mass subsidies. In Venezuela, nationalisation of the oil industry killed sector efficiency. From memory, over the decade preceding 2013, Venezuela's nationalised PDVSA tripled its employee count without pumping any more oil.

In the case of China, although it has liberalised its market to a good degree since Deng Xiaoping, it unfortunately retains its communist government structure. It's a single-party state without separations of power (as no single-party state can sustain independent branches of Government) and operates in a despotic manner. Not needing the support of the citizens, a single-party Government comes to see its population as mechanisms of the state rather than the state existing as a mechanism for the people.

China, in every respect, retains the fundamental communist gift -- a politburo from which the Party can exercise despotic power over a subjugated people who lacked the private property or access to markets to uphold an autonomous existence beyond state purview.