China Smart by Larry Herzberg

China Smart by Larry Herzberg

Author:Larry Herzberg
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press


China Today

32

The Communist Party

The Chinese Communist Party was founded in July 1921. Led mainly by the revolutionaries Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, it began with only fifty-seven members, most of whom were young men from the upper-middle and middle classes, including twenty-seven students, eleven journalists, and nine teachers. By 1949 it had gathered so much support among the Chinese people that it was able to drive the Nationalist Kuomintang government from the mainland and establish itself as the ruling power in China, as it has remained to the present day.

China has been a one-party state since 1949, with the Communist Party exercising complete power over the government. The Party structure consists of a National Party Congress with approximately two thousand delegates that meets every five years to elect a Central Committee of around two hundred members. The Central Committee then elects a “Politburo” (Political Bureau) of between twenty and twenty-five members. The Politburo constitutes the true ruling leadership of the Party and is believed to meet on a monthly basis. The Politburo designates a Standing Committee of from six to nine of its most powerful members that meets weekly and functions as the true executive authority for the Party and the nation.

The paramount leader of the Party is elected by the Central Standing Committee and simultaneously holds the offices of General Secretary, overseeing civilian Party affairs; Chairman of the Central Military Commission, in charge of military affairs; and President, the ceremonial head of state. The current leader is Xi Jinping, who was elected at the 18th National Congress held in October 2012. After the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, the unwritten rule was that the top leadership position could not be held for more than two terms of five years each. However, in March of 2018 the two-term limit was eliminated, in effect allowing Xi Jinping to potentially become the only head of state since Mao to remain in power for life.

For administrative purposes, China is divided into thirty-three provincial-level units. These include twenty-two provinces, four municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing), five autonomous regions (Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang, Guangxi, and Ningxia), and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau).

Every province (except Hong Kong and Macau, the two special administrative regions) has a provincial committee, headed by a secretary. The Committee Secretary is effectively in charge of the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government.

A municipality is a higher level of city and is directly under the Chinese central government, with status equal to that of the provinces. In practice, a city’s political status is higher than that of a province.

An autonomous region is a large area of land with a large population of a particular minority ethnic group. Like provinces, an autonomous region has its own local government but theoretically is given more legislative authority. The governor of each autonomous region is usually appointed from its respective minority ethnic group.

The governors of China’s provinces and autonomous regions and mayors of its centrally controlled municipalities



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