The Chinese Communist Party recently held a grand ceremony in Beijing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the National People’s Congress. Party leader Xi Jinping claimed that the system of the People’s Congress is a “great creation” and emphasized the need to strengthen the “party’s leadership” over the People’s Congress. Experts pointed out that while Xi Jinping praised the political significance of the People’s Congress system, the insistence on the party’s leadership exposed the falsehood of the People’s Congress being the highest organ of state power in the country. Analysis suggests that Western democracies do not subscribe to the idea of governance from the perspective of the ruling party, unlike the Communist Party of China’s People’s Congress system, which operates under the premise of “listening to the party.”
According to reports from Xinhua News Agency, the conference was held in the name of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the morning of the 14th. Xi Jinping attended the meeting and delivered a speech.
The People’s Congress system of the Chinese Communist Party, abbreviated as the National People’s Congress, is defined as the top-level system. Following the Party’s takeover in 1949, the first session of the National People’s Congress was held in Beijing in 1954. The annual National People’s Congress session, along with the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is typically convened in March in Beijing.
Xi Jinping not only lauded the People’s Congress system as a “great creation in the history of political systems for mankind,” but also claimed that the establishment of the People’s Congress system signifies a “great leap” from a political system where a minority controls power and the vast majority are oppressed and exploited to one where the Chinese Communist Party leads and the people are the masters.
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Li Yutan, an adjunct professor at the National Development Institute of National Chengchi University in Taiwan, stated that over the 75 years of Communist Party rule, a minority of party members have held political power while the vast majority of Chinese people have been oppressed and marginalized. Therefore, Xi Jinping’s statement actually exposes his own shortcomings.
Xi Jinping also emphasized the need for party committees at all levels to strengthen comprehensive leadership over the work of the People’s Congress and stressed that all levels of the People’s Congress should “always adhere to the centralized and unified leadership of the Party.”
The Communist Party’s constitution designates the National People’s Congress as the highest organ of state power, responsible for legislation, without specifying that its work must be carried out under the “party’s leadership.” However, the highest leader of the Communist Party’s People’s Congress (akin to the chairman in Western terms) is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and obedient to the highest leader of the Communist Party.
Gong Xiangsheng, Deputy Researcher at the Taiwan Institute for National Defense and Security Studies, told The Epoch Times that Xi Jinping’s praise for the People’s Congress was a political gesture to accentuate the significance of the system while promoting the superiority of China’s political system. However, he could not resist emphasizing the need to uphold the party’s leadership over the People’s Congress, thereby revealing the facade of the People’s Congress as the highest organ of state power in the Communist state.
He believes that on the surface, the People’s Congress still represents the source of state power granted by the will of the people as stipulated in the Chinese Constitution. However, “despite the shadow of a cabinet system, the Chinese Communist Party leads the government, serving as the only legally designated ruling party according to the constitution, rendering this highest organ of state power a mere rubber stamp.”
Democracy is accessible in many countries and regions around the world but scarce in authoritarian states. Even in Communist China, the official narrative of “democracy” includes the concept of “full-process democracy,” with the People’s Congress system embodying this “democracy.”
The Chinese Communist Party claims that the delegates at all levels of the People’s Congress are elected democratically. While delegates at the township and county levels are elected directly by the voters, delegates at the national and provincial levels (including provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government) and those in districts, cities, and autonomous prefectures are elected indirectly by the next lower level of People’s Congress.
However, the legitimacy of People’s Congress delegates primarily being made up of senior Communist Party officials and party members, as opposed to truly representing the interests of the common people, has long been questioned. Many Chinese citizens have never even participated in elections. For years, many observers have noted that the lack of separation between the overseers and the overseen implies that the People’s Congress meetings are merely ceremonial.
On November 26, 1998, Yao Lifa, who was then working at the Work-Study Office of the Education Bureau in Qianjiang City, Hubei Province, ran as an independent candidate and was elected as a delegate to the county-level People’s Congress in Qianjiang with 1706 valid votes. Such examples were rare in China at the time, and independent candidates have faced increased suppression in recent years.
In mid-October 2021, the Communist Party held a Central People’s Congress Working Conference, during which Xi Jinping reiterated the concept of “full-process democracy,” emphasizing that “democracy is not a decoration, nor is it for show, but it should be used to solve the problems that people need to resolve.” Subsequently, Wang Qiaoling and 13 other citizens in Beijing jointly issued a statement online, announcing their intention to participate as independent candidates in the upcoming People’s Congress delegate elections in Beijing in November. They were threatened and forced to withdraw from the elections.
Kou Jianwen, a professor in the Political Science Department at National Taiwan University, told The Epoch Times that the party-state system of the Chinese Communist Party is fundamentally different from the concept of Western democratic politics. Chinese authorities may claim it is also a form of democracy, as there are many forms of democracy, but the key difference lies in Western democracies starting from a standpoint of distrust of those in power. In contrast, the Chinese People’s Congress or democracy essentially involves following the party’s directives and operating under the party’s leadership.
“In Western democratic politics, there is distrust of those with power, which is why there is a separation of powers and a desire for independent media. However, the entire political system currently running in mainland China requires trust in the party, obedience to the party, and belief in those with power, which is fundamentally different from the philosophical thinking behind the development of Western democratic politics.”
Xi Jinping also claimed that the delegate system of the Chinese People’s Congress has “remarkable political advantages” and offers “important institutional guarantees for creating the dual miracles of rapid economic development and long-term social stability.”
Kou Jianwen stated that in reality, China’s economic development has occurred due to reform and opening up, by delegating power and benefits to the people, leading to increased freedom.
Li Yutan further noted that China’s so-called rapid economic development is a form of distorted growth, and its long-term social stability is built on violence and control, including the comprehensive surveillance of the population through cameras and facial recognition, as seen during times of epidemic control.
He believes that the three core elements of Western democracy – “competition, participation, and freedom” – serve as a stark contrast to the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Congress system or the so-called full-process democracy. The latter embodies authoritarian rule, inevitably leading to extreme corruption of power. “This authoritarianism is now being resisted globally, and its downfall is not far off.”