In the People's Republic of China, politics functions within the parameters of a unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. This one-party state operates 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."
The Chinese political system is considered authoritarian.
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 the judiciary's 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.
Overview
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the government in Beijing officially asserts to be the sole legitimate government of all of China, which it defines as including mainland China and Taiwan. This has been disputed by the Republic of China (ROC) government since the ROC government retreated to Taiwan in 1949. The ROC has since undergone significant political reforms following the end of martial law in 1987.
China's population, geographical vastness, and social diversity has historically frustrated attempts to rule from Beijing. Reform and opening up during the 1980s and the devolution of much central government decision making, combined with the strong interest of local CCP officials in enriching themselves, made it increasingly difficult for the central government to assert its authority. At the time, limited direct elections were held at the village and town levels.
The Chinese political system is considered authoritarian. There are no freely elected national leaders, political opposition is suppressed, all organized religious activity is controlled by the CCP, dissent is not permitted, and civil rights are curtailed. Limited direct elections have occurred only at the local level, not the national level, with all candidate nominations controlled by the CCP. The nature of the elections is highly constrained by the CCP's monopoly on power, censorship, and party control over elections. By law, all elections at all levels must adhere to the leadership of the CCP. The level of comprehensive control exercised by the CCP, combined with its revolutionary origins, has led it to be described as "one of the most durable regimes in modern history".
Some argue that during the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, collective leadership in the country has waned. Others, such as academician Joseph Torigian, argue that Deng Xiaoping never really implemented collective leadership.
Self-description
The Chinese constitution describes the country's system of government as a people's democratic dictatorship. The CCP has also used other terms to officially describe China's system of government including "socialist consultative democracy", and whole-process people's democracy.
According to the CCP theoretical journal Qiushi, "[c]onsultative democracy was created by the CPC and the Chinese people as a form of socialist democracy. ... Not only representing a commitment to socialism, it carries forward China's political and cultural traditions. Not only representing a commitment to the organizational principles and leadership mode of democratic centralism, it also affirms the role of the general public in a democracy. Not only representing a commitment to the leadership of the CPC, it also gives play to the role of all political parties and organizations as well as people of all ethnic groups and all sectors of society".
The semi-official journal China Today stated the CCP's view: "Consultative democracy guarantees widespread and effective participation in politics through consultations carried out by political parties, peoples congresses, government departments, CPPCC committees, peoples organizations, communities, and social organizations". On the other hand, according to the 2023 V-Dem Democracy indices China was the second least electoral democratic country in Asia.
Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dominates the Chinese political landscape. Constitutionally, the party's supreme body is its National Congress, which meets every five years. Meetings were irregular before the Cultural Revolution but have been periodic since then. The National Congress elects the Central Committee and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI); the Central Committee in turn elects bodies such as:
- The General Secretary, which is the highest-ranking official within the Party and usually the Chinese paramount leader.
- The Politburo, consisting of 22 full members (including the members of the Politburo Standing Committee);
- The Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful decision-making body in China, which as of June 2020 consists of seven members;
- The Secretariat, the principal administrative mechanism of the CCP, headed by the General Secretary;
- The Central Military Commission
Role and function
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. Senior government officials throughout the country are appointed by the CCP, and are mostly CCP members. 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. As outlined by the CCP constitution: "Government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west – the party leads them all." 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." 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." CCP control is tightest in central government offices and urban economic, industrial, and cultural settings; it is considerably looser over the government and party establishments in rural areas, where a significant percentage of mainland Chinese people live. The CCP's most important responsibility comes in the selection and promotion of personnel. They also see that party and state policy guidance is followed and that non-party members do not create autonomous organizations that could challenge party rule. Significant are the leading small groups which coordinate activities of different agencies. State-owned enterprises, private companies and foreign-owned businesses are also required to have internal CCP committees.
In relative liberalization periods, the influence of people and groups outside the formal party structure has increased, particularly in the economic realm. Nevertheless, in all governmental institutions in the PRC, the party committees at all levels maintain a powerful and pivotal role in the administration. and 2024 amendments to the Organic Law of the State Council. Under Xi, several state and party bodies have effectively merged under the "one institution with two names" system.
Under general secretaries Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the two main factions were the Tuanpai and the Shanghai clique. especially since the 20th CCP National Congress, in which Xi's allies dominated the new Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee.
Constitution
The first constitution of the PRC was created on 20 September 1954, before which the Common Program, an interim constitution-like document created by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference was in force. The second constitution in 1975 shortened the constitution to just about 30 articles, containing CCP slogans and revolutionary language throughout. The role of courts was slashed, and the Presidency was gone. The third constitution in 1978 expanded the number of articles, but was still under the influence of the very-recent Cultural Revolution.
The current constitution, declared on 4 December 1982, is the PRC's fourth but has subsequently been amended five times. The last amendment involved, among other things, abolishing term limits for the state president and vice president.
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.
Leadership
Paramount leader
Power is concentrated in the "paramount leader," an informal title currently occupied by Xi Jinping, who heads the three 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. 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, but at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping's term limits were removed and his powers were expanded.
As a one-party state, the CCP general secretary holds ultimate power and authority over state and government with no term limit. The CCP retains effective control over governmental appointments. The offices of CCP general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission have often been held by one individual since 1989, granting the individual predominant power over the country. Since 1982, the CCP general secretary has also been the political chief position of China (above the president and premier).
Party and state leaders
The CCP Politburo Standing Committee consists of the government's top leadership. Historically it has had five to nine members. As of 2024, it has seven members.
The membership of the PSC is strictly ranked in protocol sequence. Historically, the general secretary (or party chairman) has been ranked first; the rankings of other leaders have varied over time. Since the 1990s, the general secretary (also the president), premier, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, the chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party's top anti-graft body, and the first-ranked secretary of the CCP secretariat have consistently also been members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
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. With 2,977 members in 2023, it is the largest parliamentary body in the world. Under China's current Constitution, the NPC is structured as a unicameral legislature, with the power to legislate, to oversee the operations of the government, and to elect the major officials of state. Its delegates are indirectly elected for a five-year term through a multi-tiered system. According to the constitution, the NPC is the highest state institution within China's political system.
The meetings cover reviewing and approving major new policy directions, laws, the budget, and major personnel changes. The NPC elects and appoints important state positions such as the president, the vice president, the chairman and other members of the Central Military Commission, the premier and rest of the State Council, the president of the Supreme People's Court, and procurator general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate. The NPC also elects a Standing Committee (NPCSC), its permanent body which meets regularly between NPC sessions. Most national legislation in China is adopted by the NPCSC. Most initiatives are presented to the NPCSC for consideration by the State Council after previous endorsement by the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. They must accept the primacy of the CCP to exist and their members are preapproved by the CCP's United Front Work Department. Their original function was to create the impression that the PRC was being ruled by a diverse national front, not a one-party dictatorship. The major role of these parties is to attract and subsequently muzzle niches in society that have political tendencies, such as academia.
right|thumb|270x270px|The 12th [[National People's Congress held in 2013]]
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. 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. The NPC Standing Committee is more assertive than the NPC itself and has vetoed proposed laws. Under the Chinese constitution, the President of China is a largely ceremonial office with limited powers. 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. 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. 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. In March 2018, presidential term limits were abolished.
State Council
The State Council is the supreme administrative organ of China's unified state apparatus and the executive organ of the National People's Congress. Members of the State Council include the premier, a variable number of vice premiers (now four), state councilors (protocol equal of vice premiers but with narrower portfolios), and ministers and heads of State Council commissions. 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.
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. Their level of authority and autonomy in economic decision-making is high, and they have played a major role in national economic development.
Through the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the municipal government regulatory mechanisms expanded, as did their capacity to regulate peri-urban areas. 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.
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. The CMC chairman is concurrently held by the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in line with the CCP's absolute control over the military.
Legal system
The People's Republic of China has a socialist legal system based upon civil law, formally called "socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics." The country does not have judicial independence or judicial review as its judiciary does not have authority beyond what is granted to it by the National People's Congress. The CCP's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission maintains effective control over the courts and their personnel. State functionaries and military personnel on active service are not permitted to renounce their Chinese nationality. If a citizen wishes to resume PRC nationality, foreign nationality is no longer recognized.
Ethnic minorities
Policies toward Uyghurs
In 2020, widespread public reporting detailed the Chinese government's pattern of human rights violations in its continuing maltreatment of Uyghurs. These abuses include forced labor, arbitrary detainment, forced political indoctrination, destruction of cultural heritage, and forced abortions and sterilization. Critics of the policy have described it as the Sinicization of Xinjiang and called it an ethnocide or cultural genocide, with many activists, NGOs, human rights experts, government officials, and the U.S. government calling it a genocide. The Chinese government denies it is committing human rights violations in Xinjiang.
Legalist influence
Some scholars have drawn comparisons between the current governance of the CCP and certain aspects of the ancient Chinese philosophy of Legalism. As articulated by The Book of Lord Shang, Legalism emphasizes centralized authority, strict laws, harsh punishments, and a merit-based bureaucratic system.
Foreign relations
thumb|right|upright=0.9|Chinese leader [[Hu Jintao and US president George W. Bush, with first ladies Liu Yongqing and Laura Bush, wave from the White House. The relationship between the world's sole superpower United States and the emerging superpower status of the PRC is closely watched by international observers.]]right|thumb|upright=0.9|The [[Karakoram Highway connecting China and Pakistan is an example of China's international development involvements.]]
The PRC maintains diplomatic relations with most countries in the world. In 1971, the PRC replaced the Republic of China, commonly known as "Taiwan" since the 1970s, as the sole representative of China in the United Nations and as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. China had been represented by the Republic of China at the time of the UN's founding in 1945. (See also China and the United Nations.)
Under the One-China policy, the PRC has made it a precondition to establishing diplomatic relations that the other country acknowledges its claim to all of China, including Taiwan, and severs any official ties with the Republic of China (ROC) government. The government actively opposes foreign government meetings with the 14th Dalai Lama in a political capacity, as the spokesperson for a separatist movement in Tibet.
The PRC has been playing a leading role in calling for free trade areas and security pacts amongst its Asia-Pacific neighbors. In 2004, the PRC proposed an entirely new East Asia Summit (EAS) framework as a forum for regional security issues that pointedly excluded the United States. The EAS, which includes ASEAN Plus Three, India, Australia and New Zealand, held its inaugural summit in 2005. China is also a founding member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), alongside Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Foreign aid
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China under the CCP in 1949, China joined the international community in providing foreign aid. In the past few decades, the international community has seen an increase in Chinese foreign aid. Specifically, a recent example is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure project that was launched in 2013 by Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The stated goal of the program is to expand maritime routes and land infrastructure networks connecting China with Asia, Africa, and Europe, boosting trade and economic growth. It involves a massive development of trade routes that will create a large expansion of land transportation infrastructure and new ports in the Pacific and Indian oceans to facilitate regional and intercontinental trade flow and increase oil and gas supply.
International territorial disputes
The PRC is in a number of international territorial disputes, several of which involved the Sino-Russian border. Although the great majority of them are now resolved, China's territorial disputes have led to several localized wars in the last 50 years, including the Sino-Indian War in 1962, the Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969 and the Sino-Vietnam War in 1979. In 2001, China and Russia signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, which ended the conflict. Other territorial disputes include islands in the East and South China Seas, and undefined or disputed borders with India, Bhutan and North Korea.
International organizations
On 26 October 1971, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758 to transfer the seat from the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan to the People's Republic of China (PRC). Today, not only is China a part of many UN organizations, it is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. A memo done by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission identified Chinese nationals serving in leadership position within international organizations signifies China's increasing involvement in the international arena. For instance, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and so on are all organizations that Chinese nationals are currently in position of (The memo is updated on a semi-annual basis). Leading small groups help coordinate guiding principles for policy development. The general trend is that state policy documents issued thereafter tend to express more concrete details. This method of first implementing policy through local pilot testing was also used during the Mao era. 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. The typical approach is that central government leadership begins drafting formal policies, law, or regulations after policy has been developed at local levels. The central government sets the strategic direction while local officials carry it out, Since the tenure of Xi Jinping, the practice by which the CCP sets policy priorities at a high level is known as "top-level design". 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. Heilmann writes that the state's "unusual adaptive capacity" in economic matters is attributable to an "institutional structure that ... enables it to try out alternative approaches to overcome long-standing impediments to economic development, tackle newly emerging challenges, and grasp opportunities when they open up." 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.
Academic Chen Li writes that institutional adaptation in China's state sector extends to the late 1950s, and that since the 1990s, "continuous learning, experimentation, and adaptation of CPC central bureaucracy ... has not only brought about the rise of China's 'national champions' in finance, but also sustained critical support for the entire 'national team'." The highest tiers (including department chiefs, deputy department chiefs, and section chiefs) have significant involvement in policy-making.
Ideological groupings
Various ideological groupings exist in China, often with hybrid and varying beliefs on political, economic, and cultural matters. The "Old Left" support pre-1978 Maoist socialism.
Liberalism in China covers a significant range of ideologies.
Within China, academic debate regarding theories of the public sphere began in the 1980s. Researchers have argued that the western driven definition of "civil society" is too narrowly fixed, which does not allow for a full understanding of Chinese civil society. Taru Salmenkari, an associate professor specializing in contemporary China and issues of democracy and civil society in East Asia at Tallinn University, has argued in her "Theoretical Poverty in the Research on Chinese Civil Society" that to understand Chinese civil society, one must "...go beyond the question of the degree of autonomy from the state. It must address the nature of horizontal contacts through which civil society is constituted". As the study illustrates, allowing social media to flourish also has allowed negative and positive comments about the state and its leaders to exist.
Protests
Citizen surveys
Surveys have shown a high level of the Chinese public's satisfaction with their government. These views are generally attributed to the material comforts and security available to large segments of the Chinese populace as well as the government's attentiveness and responsiveness.
A 2009 study by academic Tony Sachs found that 95.9% of Chinese citizens were relatively satisfied or extremely satisfied with the central government, with the figure dropping to 61.5% for their local governments. A study published in The China Quarterly on attitudes from 2003 to 2016 found that people in coastal regions were particularly satisfied with government performance.
Using survey experiments from 2018, a 2023 study found that 37 percent supported "removing the term limit for the national leader" in indirect surveys, compared to 59.6% in direct surveys, though it did add that "as the 95% confidence interval crosses 50%, we cannot conclude that only a minority supported the term limit removal". It also found that 76.7% trust the central government while 67% trust the local government. It concludes that "The lack of evidence for majority support for the term limit removal indicates the Chinese public is not unquestioning or naïve; they are capable of expressing reservations about government, at least indirectly. This finding further suggests the relatively high level of trust in the national government is largely genuine".
According to the World Values Survey covering 2017 to 2020, 95% of Chinese respondents have significant confidence in their government. The survey also showed that trust in government had increased since 2003, particularly following the anti-corruption campaign of Xi Jinping. Satisfaction with interactions with local officials had also increased from 47.9% in 2011 to 75.1% by 2016. The same survey found that Han Chinese are more positive towards the government than are ethnic minorities, who tend to conceal their views of the government. It also found that college education, CCP membership and urban residency were correlated with higher support for the government. The survey found that support for Xi Jinping was between 65% and 70%.
Survey results from researchers at Stanford University from 2014 to 2020 show no clear alignment along the left-right spectrum or pro-government or anti-government positions. Wealthier and more educated Chinese tend to prefer market liberalization, political democratization, and are less nationalistic, while poorer and less educated citizens show the opposite trend. The survey's authors believe may be a reflection of how the former group has benefited more from China's market reforms.
Summarizing survey data developed from 2003 to 2020, academic Lan Xiaohuan writes that overall satisfaction is approximately 83% for the central government, 78% for provincial governments, and 70% for county and township governments.
Publishing in 2025, academic Bingqin Li writes that survey data shows that improved social services may strengthen public trust in the government. Li cites survey data showing that political trust and policy expectation of both the central and local governments were higher in New Rural Pension Scheme pilot areas than in non-pilot areas, and data showing that improving infrastructure led to improvements of political trust. After the establishment of The People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Mao banned any NGOs that were related to counter revolutionary goals. During the reform era under Deng beginning the 1970s, NGOs although not completely banned, three laws were implemented to keep relatively tight control over them––the Regulations on the Registration and Management of Social Organizations, the Regulations on the Registration and Management of Foundations, and the Interim Provisions for the Administration of Foreign Chambers of Commerce in China. The latter two were implemented after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and the general tone of all the regulations emphasized government control. For instance, the regulations require a two-tiered management system, in which before being legally registered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, a government agency must sponsor the organization; thus, two governmental agencies must be monitoring the day-to-day operations of the NGO.
In 2017, a policy called "Management of Overseas NGOs' Activities in Mainland China Law" (FNGO Law) was enacted, which creates registration barriers that, for instance, require a Chinese partner organization to sign on. The reaction from the West has widely been that the space for NGOs to conduct work in may be shrinking.
Many NGOs in the PRC have been described as government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGOs) that are organized under the CCP's united front system.
The All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC) is a people's organization and chamber of commerce established in 1953. The ACFIC was established to advance the CCP's interests and promote the party's policies among private entrepreneurs. It also seeks to address occupational health and safety issues and carries on industrial policy oversight.