China’s Two Sessions: Doubling Down on ‘Democracy’ in a One-Party State

China’s National People’s Congress, which holds its full membership plenary meeting each March, is typically seen from the outside as a ho-hum affair. Members pass new laws with almost complete unanimity. Discussions and debates of legislative matters are kept behind closed doors. Decisions are pre-determined. The phrase “rubber stamp parliament” is widely used to describe China’s law-making body.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) convenes nearly concurrently with the NPC. The CPPCC, touted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a broadly representative body, adviseS the NPC and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, but it has no legislative power at all.

This year’s “Two Sessions,” as the two meetings are called, did not veer much from the normal script. What was most notable was how the meetings and the Chinese media went to great lengths to continue to describe and define what they are calling “Chinese democracy.”

People’s Daily is the Chinese Communist Party's official media outlet. What is written in People’s Daily is a faithful reflection of the mind of party leadership at any given moment. In a report on President Xi Jinping during the NPC meetings, People’s Daily wrote, “Xi believes that democracy is a requirement for modern countries, but it must be in line with national conditions, and Chinese democracy should by no means be the same as Western-style democracy. He describes Chinese democracy as a ‘whole-process people’s democracy,’ which covers all aspects of the democratic process and all sectors of society.”

“The purpose of democracy,” the paper reported Xi said, “is to address the issues that require resolution by the people.”

By that argument, any system of governance is “democracy,” as long as it speaks to issues that “the people” need resolved. That bastardization of the meaning of democracy omits any mention of the methods by which citizens are able to convey their concerns and to have input into their resolution. Most importantly, in Xi’s version of democracy, its fundamental characteristic – that the people have the right, indeed the mandate, to choose the representatives who will convey and resolve their concerns – has been completely carved out. Xi’s vision for the version of democracy that the CCP promotes as a superior governance formula – for not only China but also for other developing nations – relies on one key characteristic: only Communist Party members need apply.

In another article on the Two Sessions, the People’s Daily described Xi’s evolving thought on democracy.

“...China’s whole-process people’s democracy integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, direct democracy with indirect democracy, and people's democracy with the will of the state.”

What does that mean? Reading it in the original Chinese does not improve the understanding, and in fact, invites more questions than it answers.

As interesting as this is in terms of political philosophy, what is even more intriguing is Xi Jinping’s attention to the subject in the first place. Why is Xi attempting to portray China as a democracy?

For decades, the Communist Party has reveled in its one-party, decidedly non-democratic power. The People’s Republic of China has never been apologetic about its form of government. Since 1949, when the Communists won the civil war they had prosecuted against the ruling Nationalists, taking over mainland China, the CCP has been resolutely proud of what it sees as its achievements, and has never, until recently, been defensive of them.

Since 2019, however, Xi has felt it necessary to attempt to recast the image and profile of the form of government under which China claims to govern. This year’s NPC and CPPCC meetings were affirmations that China will continue to double-down on a four-year old propaganda message portraying China as a democracy of a new brand. Under this narrative, China is not only a democracy, but a better democracy than the “liberal democracies” of the West.

While it is a struggle to understand the terminology of this new form of democracy, it is an even more baffling task to understand what impelled Xi to wade into these waters in the first place.

Xi’s pivot to a claim that China’s governance model is a form of democracy, an improved form, feels false and defensive. Why is he trying to compete in the arena of democracy which, by his own admission, he feels is ill-suited for China in the first place?

A reasonable answer to this question is that by using the term democracy to describe China’s governance model, less powerful, more vulnerable nations coming under China’s influence can launder the association, particularly when taking Chinese money for infrastructure projects.  Changing the language by which China’s political system operates does not change the fact that Chinese citizens have nothing close to democracy (they can’t vote, or even openly criticize their leaders) but the terminology of a “new” kind of democracy can persuade younger, more impressionable minds that the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party believe and behave in a palatable form of democracy.

An example of this can be found in an article printed in The Nation, a leading English-language newspaper of the Seychelles. In December 2021, the Chinese ambassador to the Seychelles was given space by the paper to write an article praising the virtues of Chinese democracy.  Ambassador Guo Wei wrote at length about “what China's democracy means to the world,” in the article that she titled “Understanding China's Whole-Processed People's Democracy.” Her goal, she said, is to help friends in Seychelles “better understand China’s democratic development model.”

The ambassador wrote, “Democracy is a common value of humanity, and it is also an important idea that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese people have always adhered to.” She referred to a white paper issued by the Chinese government titled, “China:  Democracy that Works,” “which comprehensively expounds the major ideas, standards, the core essence of and China’s major contributions to the whole-process people’s democracy proposed by President Xi Jinping.”

Guo added, “The great idea of whole-process people's democracy… has become the guiding ideology of the Party and the state.” (It was incorporated into Chinese law in 2021.) She goes on to argue that:

The most basic criterion for democracy is whether people have the right to participate extensively in national governance, whether people’s demands can be responded to and satisfied… China has ensured that its people have channels to express their aspirations, wishes and demands on issues ranging from important national strategies and policies to social governance and basic necessities of life, enabling their voices to be heard and their requests to be answered.

Her next statement is, however, more factual, and betrays the true mechanisms and nature of the form of democracy China has.

“Democracy in China gives full expression to the guidelines of the CPC, the will of the state, and the expectations of the people…”  In other words, China's democracy exists first and foremost within the framework provided by the Chinese Communist Party.

She continued, “Whether a country is democratic should be acknowledged by the international community, not arbitrarily decided by a few self-appointed judges. There is no fixed model of democracy; it manifests itself in many forms.” That perspective leaves the door open for anything, including authoritarianism under a one-party state, to be declared a “democracy.”

The Seychelles, a nation off of the eastern coast of Africa, punches above its weight in strategic importance. It has been a focus for China for decades. China has explored the option of putting a military base there, as has India. As the Deccan Herald reported in 2020, “Seychelles has been deftly playing the geopolitical game without compromising what it perceives as its national interests and sovereignty.” No wonder that China would like to be more favorably perceived by the leadership and citizens of the Seychelles. Dressing up as a democracy may help their cause.

This year’s National People’s Congress and CPPCC meetings saw Xi Jinping, the architect of a new concept of democracy that is under-pinned by a one-party state and a complete absence of universal suffrage, become a third-term president. The great irony of his presidency is that it took backroom dealing, not any form of democracy, to change China's constitution to allow him to serve in the office indefinitely. One might ask if whole-process people's democracy would have rendered the same result.