by Mustafa Hyder Sayed

 

 

There is a prevalent perception that China is governed exclusively by the CPC and that power is only wielded by the CPC. This perception is reinforced by skewed reporting of China's governance model by the Western press, which often does not represent the realities of what was once the Middle Kingdom. Therefore, many opinions and perspectives that people have formed about China and the CPC are based on inaccurate information. 

 

While the CPC founded the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, and is the architect of modern China, there are other political parties that represent different segments of society including minorities, other ideologies, professions and heritage, and these political parties have a voice and representation in China’s parliament. China has a total of 56 ethnic groups and eight political parties (in addition to the CPC). The political parties are as follows: China Democratic League, China Zhi Gong Party, The Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, China Democratic National Construction Association, China Association for Promoting Democracy, Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party, Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, and Jiusan Society. 

 

According to Brooking’s paper: “Ethnic Minority Elites in China’s Party-State Leadership: An Empirical Assessment”, “the number of ethnic minority cadres at all levels of leadership increased from about 10,000 in 1950 to almost 3 million in 2007”. The paper also notes that in 2002, China’s NPC revised the Law of Ethnic Minority Autonomous Areas of the People’s Republic of China. This revised law now ensures that the top positions of the local government in all ethnic minority autonomous areas should be held by a person who hails from that ethnic minority background, so as to be truly representative of that area. 

 

Furthermore, just this year, the National Committee of the Chinese People Political Consultative Conference (upper house of Parliament), gave 5,900 proposals focused on the 14th Five Year Plan’s aim of poverty alleviation and family planning. These proposals came from 2,100 advisors that comprised from 34 different sectors and professions in China. Similarly, in 2016, out of the 5,769 proposals, 42 were marked as key proposals, and processed on priority. 

 

In his 2016 paper, “Reflections on Chinese Governance”, Francis Fukuyama highlights an important point. He says, “Perhaps the most important part of Chinese decision-making in China concerns succession and personnel turnover since Deng Xiaoping. The entire Chinese leadership has observed term-limits, with what are now three transitions of power to new individuals on a ten-year cycle.” In state governance, smooth and conflict-free succession is often an exception, not the norm. Whether first world countries like the United States, where the recent US elections saw President Trump’s refusal to accept the election results and cling to power, or democracies in Asia, where we see the same families and faces returning to power again and again, China under CPC has mastered the crucial art of succession, a unique vantage point that ultimately strengthens state and governance systems. Furthermore, in the same paper, what can be called “democracy with Chinese characteristics” is underscored. With the premise that democracy is factoring in the perspective of populace, and responding to their demands, Fukuyama says that “they (CPC) gauge popular feelings in a variety of ways; through listening to citizen complaints, interests, or wishes, they nonetheless take them into account. Indeed, some argue that since they can take a longer-term view of that interest than politicians in democratic countries, the Chinese system is in fact more genuinely accountable”. 

 

Another revealing study, that came out of a workshop organized by Zhejiang University in 2018, called “Forms of Political Inclusion in China’s Model(s) of Governance”, had the following outcomes: i) Environment and Climate Change: The 2014 amendment in the environment law in the PRC upgraded environment NGO’s from interest groups/think-tanks to an expert and/or advisor status to the government who had a significant input in drafting of legislation, making of laws, and providing research input to the respective government departments. ii) Fanying Sheqing Minyi (Popular Opinions and Social Issues): Rebekka Sagild touches upon how information collection is a manifestation of political inclusion. She analyzes how a special task-force of a China’s Local People’s Political Conference operates and collects feedback from local people and incorporates them into final proposals that are presented in the CPPC sessions in Beijing, demonstrating how grassroot issues are brought to the forefront and given a hearing and considered for addressal by China’s leadership. 

 

The aforementioned examples substantiate how China’s party-state factors in people’s wishes, and how it is subsequently responsive to the people’s aspirations. It is also noteworthy that a single reference point of a Western, liberal democracy is insufficient to be the only threshold for judging and assessing the functionality of state systems. Finally, the Chinese model, while defying the conventional definition of a Western, liberal democracy, is a functional and responsive state-system which has withstood the test of time since it’s founding, and has delivered public goods to the Chinese people in the form of unprecedented economic growth, poverty alleviation and successful containment of the Covid-19 pandemic.