Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultation
China is a country of many ethnic groups and many political parties. Before the state adopts important measures or makes decisions on major issues having a bearing on the national economy and the people’s livelihood, the CPC, as the party in power, consults with representatives of all ethnic groups, political parties and democrats without party affiliation, and all other social sectors, in order to reach a common understanding. This system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation led by the CPC is a basic political system in China.
The population, geographical vastness, and social diversity frustrate attempts to rule from Beijing. Economic reform during the 1980s and the devolution of much central government decision making, combined with the strong interest of local Communist Party officials in enriching themselves, has made it increasingly difficult for the central government to assert its authority. Political power has become much less personal and more institutionally based rather than it was during the first forty years of the PRC. For example, Deng Xiaoping was never the President of China or Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, yet he was for a decade the leader of China. Today the authority of China’s leaders is much more tied to their institutional base.
Central government leaders must increasingly build consensus for new policies among party members, local and regional leaders, influential non-party members, and the population at large. However, control is often maintained over the larger group through control of information. The Chinese Communist Party considers China to be in the initial stages of socialism. Many Chinese and foreign observers see the PRC as in transition from a system of public ownership to one in which private ownership plays an increasingly important role. Privatization of housing and increasing freedom to make choices about education and employment several weakened the work unit system that was once the basic cell of Communist Party control over society. China's complex political, ethnic and ideological mosaic, much less uniform beneath the surface than in the idealized story of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, resist simple categorization.[4]
As the social, cultural and political as well as economic consequences of market reform become increasingly manifest, tensions between the old—the way of the comrade—and the new—the way of the citizen—are sharpening. Some Chinese scholars such as Zhou Tianyong, the vice director of research of the Central Party School, argue that gradual political reform as well as repression of those pushing for overly rapid change over the next thirty years will be essential if China is to avoid an overly turbulent transition to a middle class dominated polity. Some Chinese look back to the Cultural Revolution and fear chaos if the Communist Party should lose control due to domestic upheavals and so a robust system of monitoring and control is in place to counter the growing pressure for political change.
