The Chinese National People’s Congress

Abstract

According to all three constitutions of the People’s Republic of China, those of 1954, 1975 and 1978, the central and all-important organ of state power is the people’s congress. There is a local people’s congress for every political subdivision of the country — commune or town, county, province or their equivalents — and at the apex of this pyramid stands the National People’s Congress (NPC). This system of people’s congresses is the same as that anticipated in the description of the state or political structure of a new China in Mao Zedong’s 1940 essay On New Democracy. A system of this kind was also envisaged in the Common Programme adopted in September 1949, on the eve of the proclamation of the new regime, by the plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). This stated that ‘pending the convocation of the All-China People’s Congress elected by universal franchise’ the CPPCC would itself exercise the functions and powers of this Congress, i.e., act as a provisional parliament and constituent assembly.