The tiao-kuai system (), also known as tiaotiao-kuaikuai (), forms the matrix of vertical (tiao) and horizontal (kuai) authority in the People's Republic of China. It is Chinese Communist Party's primary operational mechanism through which its principle of democratic centralism functions within PRC's unified state apparatus.
According to political scientist Kenneth Lieberthal, the "former coordinates according to function ([for] example, environment); the latter coordinates according to the needs of the locality that it governs." Thus, a local environmental protection bureau may have reporting responsibilities to both the central government's State Environmental Protection Administration and to the mayor of the city in which it is located. This systemic dynamic differs from dual leadership, a formalised institutional rule that mandates explicit vertical and horizontal accountability for specific organs, such as the Supreme People's Procuratorate and within the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
Constitutionally, organizations in both the functional and territorial systems of governance are assigned to a system of ranks. Central ministries are at the same rank as provincial governments. Lieberthal writes: "One key rule of the Chinese system is that units of the same rank cannot issue binding orders to each other. Operationally, this means that no ministry can issue a binding order to a province." Therefore, a province may challenge, overrule, or ignore decisions made by a ministry. This two-dimensional arrangement sometimes creates undesirable conflicts, and there have been calls for tiao-kuai integration (), although this is unlikely to occur due to resistance from the provinces.
Under Maoist rule
In 1949, the Chinese Communist Revolution established the People's Republic of China, a constitutionally communist state. While China experimented with centralization and decentralization policies for a few years, the Anti-Rightist Movement in 1957 solidified the principle of ideological unity among all local governments. During the Cultural Revolution, and especially the 1971-1975 "unified income and unified expenditure" () period, bureaucrats across China implemented similar agricultural and industrial policies modeled in Beijing.