China

How does one gain power in this country?

Anyone over the age of 18 can vote for people to represent them in the Nation People’s Congress and then the NPC essentially controls the rest of the political system. It appoints the president, the premier, the judges, and more or less every other governmental position so the only time that the people have a nominal say in the government is when they elect their representatives. The reason this participation is more nominal and not as pronounced as the American republic is that the congress only accepts people from the same political party with the same views and interests.

How does power divide in this country?

The power in China is subdivided amongst the legislative, executive and judicial branches. The legislative branch is a unicameral congress called the National People’s Congress or the Quanguo Renmin Daibiao Dahui. The congress has nearly 3000 seats and the representatives are elected into office by their local region and serve a term of 5 years. While the official standpoint of the Chinese government is that anyone can get elected, in reality only members of the CCP and its allied political parties are allowed in. The executive branch consists of the President and Vice president. Currently their president is President Hu Jintao and their Vice President is Xi Jinping. The president serves 5 year terms and can be elected twice. The executive branch also has a premier who is nominated by the president and confirmed by the congress and currently the premier is Wen Jiabo. The judicial branch consists of the Supreme People's Court whose judges are appointed by the National People's Congress, Local People's Courts, and the Special People's Courts. While this may appear very similar to the U.S. model of government it really isn’t as the congress controls essentially every aspect of the government and the President is merely a puppet for their purposes. The CCP controls the government completely and faces no significant political opposition.

Explain the political system:

The government is essentially a representative semi democracy in that there are supposed elections for political positions of power; however, all of the politics is controlled by one party and no opposition truly exists. The country is split into 23 different regions, which all have a small local government but are mainly ruled by the central communist government. In nearly every major decision the congress is unanimous due to their coinciding interests for example the vote for the new president was more or less unanimous with 2963 votes for Hu out of the 2987 potential votes. The country is slowly becoming more and more open and democratic but as for right now the political system is quite closed to the public and is very involved with the every day to day lives of the people in China.

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