This course offers a conceptual framework for understanding China that highlights the intersection of politics and economics. It shows that rather than develop into a full blown market economy, state and party officials at all levels of the political system maintain significant influence in economic development. Such a “political” economy has had both positive and negative outcomes, which we will assess in detail. We also look at the origins, views, backgrounds and relations among leaders, and how those leaders make decisions about public policy and try to get those decisions implemented down through the system. China has few formal institutions through which citizens can participate in politics, but we will study the strategies Chinese people use to try to influence their leaders’ decisions. Finally, we assess China’s future and whether rapid economic development and the emergence of a vibrant middle class will push China towards greater democracy or whether the single party system is likely to survive into the future. The course is a quite useful background for Chinese Politics Part 2 – China and the World. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/7FpNL67EbE4
1.4: Key Party Structures
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From the course by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Chinese Politics Part 1 – China and Political Science
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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
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From the lesson
Orientation and Module 1: Models of the Chinese Political System and the Structure of the Chinese Party/State
Before you start with the content for Module 1, please watch the Course Overview, review the Assignments and Grading page, and introduce yourself to other learners who will be studying this course with you.
Meet the Instructors
David ZweigChair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations
[MUSIC]
Now, we really want to emphasize though that there
is horizontal control by the CCP at all levels of the system.
And we can see this in this structure.
And you may have to get closer, to be able to see this clearly.
So here we have the legislature,
running basically from the I'll use my magic pen, running
from the National People's Congress, all the way down, level by level by level.
So, these are the legislature except that
law making is really only at the National People's Congress Level.
Some provincial level people's congresses can actually make some laws.
Over here, we have the government.
And so, the key player in the government is the Prime Minister.
And then he has a state council, and
then ministries running down level by level all the way to the county.
And you also have a government at each level of the system.
Provincial, municipal, county, township, and here, down here we have the village
committee which is actually the one place where there are relatively
Democratic elections, that's changed over time, but by in large but maybe 30,
40% of the elections that take place at the village committee are relatively free.
And so there, we actually find some democratic process going on,
people running for office.
We also have the courts and we have the Supreme Court, Supreme People's Court.
And here we have the Supreme People's Procurator, which is really the people,
the officials who try people, much like the Attorney General in the United States.
And then you have the courts that run down to the county level.
But the most important organization within the country and
you can see the arrows running across even here.
Provincial Party Committee running across to the bureaus,
they're running across the Provincial Level Government.
The key organization in all of this, is the party, the CCP,
the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, the Chinese Communist Party, I guess I'm going to have to go back and
forth on this to show you.
So here, what happens is that every five years, there will be
a National Party Congress, where people will get together and they party, right?
They have a National Party Congress, delegates are elected from
the localities to go into Beijing, to participate for about two weeks.
And during that time, they will elect a Central Committee.
I'll show you later, a slide that'll give you, show you the basic size of
the Central Committee, but it's about 200 full members, right?
Then the Central Committee will elect the Politburo.
And the Politburo will then elect a Secretariat.
There should be an arrow running here from the Politburo to the Standing Committee of
the Politburo and this is really the seat of power
in the Chinese political system, right here.
That's the key center, the Standing Committee, the Politburo.
Now it has seven members, it's had as many as nine, and it's had as few as five.
So the most important people are actually the members,
as I said, of the standing committee of the Politburo.
And they are the most powerful people in China,
and they control all aspects of the political system.
Most members control one of what we would call six systems
that exist within the communist party.
First one is party affairs, and these are the relationships
between the Communist Party of China and other communist parties, and party life.
Sort of meetings and information, that's one part of the party affair.
But a second part of the Communist party, a very important part, is what's called
the Organization Department, and the whole question of organizational affairs and
the party maintains the right to allocate both, all party positions.
But also as we'll discuss in a few minutes,
it also allocates a lot of positions within the government and
within the state on enterprises and controls that.
And that's what's considered the organizational affairs.
The third system, and
there's usually sitting in the Politburo Standing Committee responsible for
this, is what's called the propaganda and education system.
So universities, colleges, media, the People's Daily editorial,
the person who's response of People's Daily is the Communist Party newspaper.
So the person on the Politburo Standing Committee is responsible for
this propaganda and education system.
He will sign off, maybe one day it will be a she, but right now it's he,
will sign off everyday on what the editorial will be in the top newspaper.
Another key component of this is the political and
legal affairs system and that's really responsible for the courts,
for the police, for what are often called Strike Hard campaigns, where the party
will decide that it really needs to get some control, there's too much thievery,
too much, I don't know, too much social unrest, and they may just crack down.
We haven't seen one of those recently, but
it's interesting that the person responsible for the political and
legal affairs used to be in the Politburo Standing Committee.
Often the last person, if there were nine he'd be the ninth member.
But recently they moved that position out of the Politburo Standing Committee and
left it in the hands of an official who's just in the Politburo because they did
not want, when they're all sitting there making decisions about succession.
They don't want anybody who's in control of the gun or the secret police
to be sitting in the same room because he or she could use their leverage.
Another key component is the finance and economics, and
this is led by the prime minister.
And state owned enterprises, decisions about the economy,
these would all be controlled by the person responsible for this.
So for example,
a lot of people talk now about the internationalization of the RemNB.
The person who is the head of this system would be responsible for
actually bringing that idea and discussing it with the Politburo standing committee.
A sixth component is the Military.
And again while I'll talk about it in greater detail later it's important to
know that the military in China is a civilian controlled military.
It is not the military controlling the party but
it is the party controlling the military.
So let's go again to look here beyond the Politburo or
the Politburo Standing Committee as I said about seven people.
The politburo has about 20 people and then we'll get the Central Committee.
And the Central Committee, in essence, is really like the parliament of most
other countries, because it's here that the key decisions are really made.
And all the key power brokers, all the key players in the political
system are either full, are alternate members of the Central Committee.
And this don't necessarily just have to be people in the party structure.
The head of the writers association for
example, is often in the Central Committee.
The presidents or the chief executive officers of many of the key state owned
enterprises, such as CNPC, China National Petroleum Company.
Those people will have positions in the central committee because they want them
there to give an input into some of the decision making.
And the central committee will meet about twice a year
to approve really important policy decisions.
Decisions will be set out, when there's a party congress.
The party congress will meet.
There'll be a document.
There'll be a discussion about how the party has done over the last five years,
but it will lay out a path for the future.
But, even if it's set out as a degree of direction for the party,
one of these plenums can really send China into a very different direction.
And we saw that particularly In 1978.
In 1977, Hua Guofeng, he was the Chairman of the Communist Party in 1977,
at the 11th Party Congress, he laid out a strategy.
And that strategy was actually changed dramatically by Deng Xiaoping and
his supporters in 1978 on the way to the 3rd Plenum, before the 3rd Plenum met.
And they made those changes.
And so, he really redirected policy in another direction.
And so these plenum, these plenary sessions are actually very,
very important.
Hu Jintao, who was the President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party
through most of the 2000s, he tried to introduce his own program,
what he called the Scientific Model of Development.
Right?
And he tried to do it at the 6th Plenum of the 16th Party Congress but
it really had no traction and very little impact.
So here you can see at least I take you back.
We can go back to the 7th Party Congress which was elected in 1945.
This was just before the Civil War began.
The numbers were relatively small.
There were only 77 full and alternative members.
These would be very powerful people, these 44.
Now, 1956, the Communist Party has already won and
they establish they have their 8th party congress and here,
the numbers start to increase, and you can see that we 97 full and 73 alternate.
The big difference between a full and
an alternate member is that a full member has voting rights.
So when there's a plenum they can vote in favor or
against some kind of document that's being presented.
Alternate members don't have that voting right and that's a very big difference.
So here you can see all the way down to the 17th party congress.
That 17th Party Congress had 204 full members,
167 alternate members.
I also have here, just so that you can see,
the number of military representatives.
And here, in 1977, the military seemed to peak,
just about peak, or maybe it peaked somewhere in 769 but
I don't have the data for that.
But you can see the numbers went up significantly in this period of time.
Another key organization is the Party Secretariat, and if I flip back
you can see the Party Secretariat over here, underneath the Politburo.
Right?
And the party secretariat is very important because it has 26 departments.
Most of these departments are pretty important.
And to a certain extent, they're important because they run party affairs but
they also, in some ways, overlap with government functions.
So the most important of all of these, is the organization department.
And it's responsible for assigning all of the key party posts, and
many of the key government posts and it's key to the promotion, and to some extent,
to the succession, when people are trying to decide who's going to get promoted,
and who's going to move up into the top leadership.
Another key organization,
another key department within the secretariat is the propaganda department.
And as I mentioned before, there is a member of the standing committee of
the politburo, who supervises this, but
there is a specific propaganda department, and it monitors the media,
it's responsible for ideological study and one of the things it often does
if editors of newspapers become to critical of the communist party,
it's officials at various levels will come along and
fire the editor and try and change the leadership of the party.
And they will try monitor as well the reports in the news papers.
There is another department called People's Daily department which is the top
communist party newspaper and
as I mentioned its editorials are all approved by the person on the person on
the Politburo standing committee responsible for propaganda and education.
Another important group is the United Front Department.
And it deals with non-party people.
So when the party wants to try and pull in people
from within the society, maybe lawyers, maybe doctors, it reaches out and
wants to get these people to be more involved within the society.
They will get involved.
The united front department will get involved.
And then in Hong Kong, for example, we often see a united front department
here active, trying to encourage Hong Kong people to have positive views and
to get involved in pro government kinds of policies.
These are really the key organizations, the key departments that I mentioned here.
There's also a political and legal affairs department which is,
I mentioned before, controls all the legal.
There's an overall social stability management committee.
There's the Party School, and several other key departments within the system.
Now the secretariat, well here's some of the other organizations, right?
So here we have a Policy Research Office,
there's a Foreign Affairs Office within the Communist party which oversees,
to a certain extent oversees a form policy, state Secrets Office and
Qiushi Magazine which like the People's Daily is the official spokes
don't want to say mouth piece but it's the key party of magazine.
And a good friend of mine wrote an article in there and that was really, for him,
that was a very, very important opportunity.
Now separate from the organizational structure that I showed you,
there is what are now called Leadership Small Groups.
And Leadership Small Groups, as I said, they're not on the formal hierarchical
map, but what they are is interagency Leadership organizations.
They are similar, for example,
to the National Security Council in the United States,
where they will have a specific task.
So, for example,
you may get the leadership organization on finance and economics.
And its job will be to make the key decisions and
to draw up the key plans for economic development that
will then be put forward to the Politburo or the Politburo standing committee.
And the members of this organization will include the prime minister,
who often is the charge of this leadership small group, vice premieres,
Ministers responsible for finance, for trade, there's an adviser on
rural policy on this committee that I know used to work with him back in the 80s.
The head of the Bank of China, the People's Bank.
All of these people will get together when they have to make key decisions.
And they will draft Documents that then are passed forward to the smaller groups
for making key decisions and there are other very famous leadership small groups.
There's a leadership small group on Taiwan policy.
We know that there's one on Hong Kong and Macau affairs.
We were looking to see when it met, we know who sits on it because it's very
important to Hong Kong's political development what these people think and
what kind of decisions they want to make.
In my own research,
I've spent a lot of time looking at the Leadership Small Group in Human Talent.
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