Chinese politics

Dear SE,

In China does the President/Communist party General Secretary or the Premier have more power?

In theory, the President has ultimate authority. In practice, whoever is in charge of the Party does. That's how Mao as Chairman of the CCP, while not holding any official government position, was able to remove President Liu Shaoqi during the CR and several others from both Party and government posts.

Nowadays, the General Secretary also holds the position of President and Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission, so in short, the GenSec-President has the most influence, but unlike the Mao period, it's not exactly a "Whatever the GenSec says goes" type of situation. It would be interesting to see one day the GenSec not holding the positions of either President or the Central Military Commission Chairman, but that's not likely to happen.

This might be a dumb question KW, but at a local village / city level, how much can your average person in china participate in how things are run ? Are local officials elected in any form, to what extent does citizen democracy exist, or is it all decided within the party ?

I know that at the lower local levels there are elections, and candidates do make speeches and have some small-scale campaigns to convince people to vote for them for various government positions. These elected officials do not have to be all Party members.

It is also not uncommon for petitioners to contact government at local and provincial levels, and national too, but that's rarer, to get issues resolved.

Once we get past the lower levels, for things like provincial and national government, officials are selected by the Party, but the internal politics of the Party can be very hard to discern from the outside. It is possible for someone who has been elected at the lower levels to become selected by higher-ups to the upper levels, but if they were not in the Party before, they would have to join the CCP, or one of the other parties through the United Front organizations.

Aside from these I am not really sure about the details, as the internal politics of China are not very transparent. It's gotten better, but still pretty opaque in some instances. What I've noticed is that the higher up you go, the more predictable things can get, i.e., it becomes more obvious who is more likely to succeed whom, barring any major mistakes by potential successors or shifts in policies or alliances within the Party itself.

What led to this strengthening of the position of the President, KW? Also is General Secretary not the same as party Chairman? If not, why has this position risen above that of Chairman?

It's related to the Deng reforms. The short version is that GenSec never superseded Chairman, but instead replaced it with a less powerful post. Chairman replaced GenSec first in the 1940's, though I'm a bit unclear on the details about how or why.

During Mao's time as leader of the PRC, the Party leadership was Mao as Chairman and several Vice-Chairmen who were Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, and Lin Biao, but then during the CR, it became Mao as Chairman and Lin Biao as Vice-Chairman. After Lin's death, Zhou became Vice-Chairman again. I am not sure who held Vice-Chairman position after Zhou, but I believe Chen did at one point, and so did several others. Eventually both the Chairman and Vice-Chairman positions were abolished in 1982, because by that point many were uneasy with how those positions were used (and abused).

Between 1976 - 1982, Deng was Vice-Chairman and Hua Guofeng was Chairman, but Deng was more influential and eventually Hua lost in the power struggles. Hu Yaobang became Chairman next until 1982, and then the post of Chairman and Vice-Chairmen were both abolished, and so then the position of General Secretary was brought back as leader of the party. The restored General Secretary position is what Chairman was back in the Mao era, but with reduced powers, term limits, and a clearer succession process that I'm not very familiar with except that I've had this explained to me in a political science course but don't remember the details, and all of this was done in response to what happened under Mao and to how the Soviet leadership turned out.

Edited for some run-on sentences.

Thank you very much for the explanation, KW. I am surprised that Zhou Enlai was allowed to have such a high position in the party when he and Mao Zedong were in some conflict during the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps it was to make sure the extremists did not take all the positions in government? I have heard that after Lin Biao's attempt on Chairman Mao's life that Mao Zedong became weary of the radicals and rehabilitated many rightists and moderates, including Deng Xiaoping.

Imagine if in 1976 Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four were successful in organising their coup. Imagine if her group had taken control of China, oh dear, such a horrible thought. Chairman Jiang.

Zhou Enlai is a man well liked by the world. I have not understood his popularity but it seems to do with his image as a charming, suave, sophisticated and worldly diplomat. I recall when first hearing about Chinese history that I liked him because he seemed like a sane and moderate voice who was doing his best to restrain the madness of the leadership.

Also does the National People's Congress or the Communist Party General Secretary have more power?

The CPC Politburo and Central Committee have more influence than the National People's Congress. The Party exerts authority through state organs, but the Party organs are where the influential decisions are made. This was the situation during Mao's tenure, and during the CR the NPC's powers were basically destroyed. Nowadays the NPC has regained some influence, but to be honest, lower-level people's congresses and governments (including the elected officials that I mentioned before) have more authority in deciding local issues than the NPC.

The CPC chain of command seems to be a great deal more complex than the Soviet one. Party positions seem to be intentionally contradictory and ill-defined, and it's not always easy to gauge who is Number One.