I feel like I shouldn't be ignorant about stuff like that when they are playing more and more of a role on the world stage and the US is ramping up hostilities.
I feel like I shouldn't be ignorant about stuff like that when they are playing more and more of a role on the world stage and the US is ramping up hostilities.
Not a scholar but I've read the wiki articles and I've studied this kind of thing so I'll take a shot
So the first thing to remember is that the Communist Party (CPC) is legally a separate entity (and has its own politics and structure) but it is by far the largest party in China and legally the ruling party, but not above the rule of law. This means that CPC politics are very much PRC politics, but I won't cover that here. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is sort of jointly led by the government and the CPC. Other smaller parties exist and independents can run for office, but if an individual is hostile to the CPC, they have no shot in national politics and will likely struggle locally as well. Hostile parties are illegal. It is also important to remember the Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative districts which means they have their own political and legal systems.
The legislative body of the PRC is the National People's Congress which has 2980 seats. about 2100 of which are held by the CPC. There are also delegations from the PLA, Hong Kong, Macau, one from Chinese abroad, and one from Taiwan (these last two are kind of a joke though). Representatives are elected by regional congresses, the representatives of which are elected by local congresses, the representatives of which are elected form villages/neighborhoods (there might be another congress you have to get through depending on where you live). These elections have a limited number of candidates per seat (like a 100:130-150 ratio).
The NPC in full meets for roughly two weeks a year due to its size, though members are usually involved in poltiics yearly. This meeting is usually held in conjunction with the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which is sort of an advisory body made up of popular front parties as well as popular organizations without legal powers. The NPC elects the Presidium, a body of 178 members which appoints the state council, president, vice president, and which oversees the election of the members of the NPC's standing committee (NPCSC), a body of 175 members which functions as the year round legislative organ.
The executive functions are mostly carried out by the State Council of the PRC which includes 35 members, most of which represent different departments of the state. The highest position both in the State council and the PRC is the Premier (currently Li Keqiang), who serves as head of government and is responsible for the government bureaucracy. The Premier is usually a member of the CPC standing committee.
The President and the Vice President of the PRC serve a largely ceremonial role because while they have fairly broad powers, they need approval by the NPC or its standing committee to exercise any of them except for state visits. This is complicated though because the Presidency has been held by the General Secretary of the CPC since 1993 (Currently Xi Jinping).
Finally there is the judicial system, whose judges are appointed by the people's congresses at their respective levels and functions similarly to Western judiciaries.
Thanks for researching and making a big summary!
Asking questions for whoever knows the answers.
What are the bounds on this? If someone built a party around a different communist idea, like more emphasis on workplace democracy (syndies) or more emphasis on computerized planning (cybersyn), would that be within the legal bounds?
(I checked the existing secondary parties but it seems to be mostly the leftover dregs of historical splitter movements, so I didn't learn anything about present practice.)
What sort of election processes do these use? FPTP? Party list? Consensus?
I didn't understand this bit, could you clarify?
The CPC runs things at the national level pretty much unopposed but down at the lower levels one might be able to try out some different stuff. The only trade union allowed in China is the ACFTU which has 302 million members and is kind of a state organization so you wouldn't see a syndicalist party. As far as I'm aware, a lot of the economic policy is done at the provincial level with the national government setting quotas and things like that and those are also largely controlled by the CPC. That being said, the CPC is not some immobile bureaucracy that can't evolve like the late USSR was.
As for your second question, here is the 1979 law on elections which I believe is still the current one.
For your third question, iridaniotter's answer is correct as far as I'm aware however chapter 8 of that law is on nomination of candidates so you can read that if you want more info
Thanks!
So, summarizing: An election is for multiple candidates to fill N interchangeable seats. Voters can vote for up to N candidates. The top N candidates who received at least 50% of the vote get seats. If fewer than N candidates meet the 50% threshold, a runoff election is run with the leftovers until all seats are filled.
It sounds like it should have a roughly equivalent result to approval voting, though it's a lot more work to get that result. Approval voting is very good though.
The 10:13-10:15 ratio rule is still weird to me. I wonder what that's for.
The 10:13-15 thing is just so that there is a candidate pool to choose from and there is some competition. Competitive elections are usually considered important for democratic society (whatever that means). If you have 150 candidates to fill 100 seats, you have competition (even if the ideological difference isn't that significant), and ideally the Chinese government would like to see between 130 and 150 candidates for that 100 seat election, that way its not just the party picking candidates in candidate selection, the people have some choice.
There really isn't a great translation to US politics because of how representation works here, but it would be kind of like the federal government mandating there be at least two candidates in an election for a city council seat.
Oh, the low end of the limit is great. I guess I'm more surprised by the high end being only 1.5x the number of seats. My local elections usually have five candidates per position (of course they're FPTP so only two matter).
For the last part, I'm pretty sure this means that if ten seats are up for election, 13-15 people can run.