Precious little is known about the inner working of the Chinese government, but what is known is that the entire monolithic structure, from grassroots work units to the upper echelons of political power, is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

The highest authority tests with the Standing Committee of the CCP Politburo. The politburo comprises 25 members and below it is the 210-member Central Committee, made up of younger party members and provincial party leaders. At grassroots level the party forms a parallel system to the administrations in the army, universities, government and industries. Real authority is exercised by the party representatives at each level in these organizations. They , in turn, are responsible to the party officials in the hierarchy above them, thus ensuring strict central control.

The day-to-day running of country lies with State Council, which is directly under the control of the CCP. The State Council is headed by the premier and beneath the premier are four vice premiers, 45 ministers and various other agencies. The State Council implements the decisions made by the Politburo.

Rubber-stamping the decisions of the CCP leadership is the National People’s Congress(NPC). It comprises a ‘democratic alliance’ of both party members and nonparty members who include intellectuals, technicians and industrial manages. In theory they are empowered to amend the constitution and to choose the premier and members of the State Council. The catch is that all these office-holders must first be recommended by the Central Committee, and thus the NPC is only an approving body.

The Chinese government is also equipped with a massive bureaucracy. The term ‘cadre’ is usually applied to bureaucrats, and their monopoly on power means the wide-ranging peaks are a privilege of rank for all the shadowy puppet masters of Zhongnanhai, China’s bureaucratic tradition is long one.

At grassroots level, the basic unit of scial organization outside the family is the work unit (danwei) . every Chinese person is theoretically a member of one, althought Chinese nowadays increasingly slip throught the net by being sef-employed or working in a private operation. For those who are members, tight controls are exercised by the leaders of the unit to which they belong.

The work unit is a perfect organ of social control and little proceeds without it. It approves marriages and divorces and even childbirth. It assigns housing, sets salries, handles mails, recruits party members, keeps files on each unit member, arranges transfers to other jobs or other parts of the country, and gives permission to travel abroad. The work unit’s control extends into every part of the individual’s life.

The wild card in the system is the army. Comprising land forces, the navy and the air force, it has a total of around 2.9 million members. China is divided into seven military regions, each with its own military leadership- in some cases with strong regional affiliations.

Whatever the nation’s problem may be, Communist-run China is probably infinitely preferable to one ruled by a militaristic general with more warlike ambitions.

Political Dissidence & Repression
Any organized opposition to the Communist Party is ruthlessly extirpated. The events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 focused world attention on China’s political repression.

The Communist Party has succeeded in education and cautioning the vast majority of citiaens against political deviance; they remain ‘once bitten twice shy’. University campuses, a comparative hotbed of student idealism in the late 1980s , today have joined the silence. Repressed anger is discharged at government-sanctioned protests, such as what followed the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

Resolute, organized dissidence from intellectuals is nipped in the bud through rapid arrests and sentencing; the China Democracy Party, which emerged in 1998, was swiftly uprooted and its organizers packed off to prison.

Many of China’s high-profile dissidents live abroad, which suites the PRC fine; others languish in Chinese jails or under house arrest. The dissidents themselves fine little common ground and bicker among themselves.

It’s fair to say that, for the moment, China has successfully crushed any organized resistance to the government.

Democracy?
The Chinese system of government can be tracked back to the legalist, centralized state theories of such philosophers as Han Feizi and the autocratic control of Qinshi Huangdi. In many ways, such models still have a firm grip on today’s governance.

Foreign democratic notions only entered China in the late 19 th century, and Sun Yatsen managed to establish a proto-democracy for the rule of China.

With the Communist revolution, however, calls for democracy were quietly chloroformed. Despite the excitement of optimists at village-level democratic elections for local government in China, more pragmatic observers say that true democracy can only accompany some cataclysmis transfer of power.

A full democracy of sorts does, however, exist in the Middle Kingdom. As China sees Taiwan as a rebel province within China, the island can be considered China’s first democratic (and wealthiest) state.

Hong Kong also functions as a partial democracy , as does Macau, but the greatest boost to democratic ideals is probably the Chinese government itself,

One party tule in China is an impediment to the development of the nation and the Chinese know this. The government struggles against in-built corruption, yqwning inequality, proverty and a constellation of other issues, for many, democracy remains a twinkling solution.

It was fashionable in the 1990s to appease China by agreeing that the nation will fine its own way, for the land is somehow different from everywhere else. Not surprisingly, this is also China’s line, and rather like ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’, it doesn’t actually mean anything at all.