Communist China

Abstract

The Chinese Communist regime had maintained a relatively orthodox Communist political structure, with few unique or unusual features, in the generation from its founding in 1949 to the beginning of the 1980s. The personal rule enjoyed by Party Chairman Mao Zedong from the later 1960s to his death in 1976 was the most prominent unorthodox feature but was not as unusual as: the Politburo’s having a small Standing Committee to handle weekly business and allow the larger body to meet only monthly; the dominant but unacknowledged role of factions (personal/patronage as well as ideological); and the existence of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference as a forum for the regime’s no fewer than eight puppet parties. During the 1980s–90s there would be many changes to political structure, mostly only minor, but a few of real importance.