National People’s Congress - China
Description
Charles McKelvey:
(Charles makes the case for the positive aspects of indirect (tiered) elections)
" the highest organ of State power in China is not the Party but the National People’s Congress (NPC). Established by the Constitution of 1954, the NPC has great legislative powers. Moreover, only the NPC has the power to amend the Constitution, with proposals for amendments requiring approval by 2/3 of the NPC deputies.
The National People’s Congress also has the constitutional authority to elect the President and the Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China, and to appoint several governmental executives, reserving the power to impeach by majority vote. And the NPC elects the Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary-General and other members of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Whereas the NPC holds annual ten-to-fourteen-day sessions, its Standing Committee, consisting of approximately 150 to 170 deputies of the NPC, meets in continuous session. In addition to the Standing Committee, there are nine special committees dedicated to such issues as legislative affairs; financial and economic affairs; education, health, science and culture; foreign affairs; environmental protection; and agriculture and rural affairs. These special committees study, consult, and debate with respect to legislative proposals put forth by the executive branch or by deputies of the National People’s Congress, which often includes proposals that originated in the Communist Party of China or its Central Committee.
We should especially be aware that the deputies of the National People’s Congress are elected, directly and indirectly, by the people, in a tiered structure of people’s congresses, with a foundation in the local village or urban neighborhood. At the lowest level, local People’s Congresses are directly elected by the people. At this lowest level, there is no limit on the number of candidates for each seat; candidates can be nominated by the Communist Party of China, various other political parties, mass organizations, and any voter seconded by at least ten other voters. The list of candidates is finalized by an election committee that is appointed by the Standing Committee of the local People’s Congress. Some districts elect one person, while others elect two or three, with the voter allowed as many votes as there are seats to be filled. Voting is done by secret ballot. There are provisions for runoff elections.
Local voting districts are generally from 200 to 1000 voters, but larger counties can have as many as 4,000 voters. Local People’s Congresses also elect the executive branches of local government, including governors, mayors, and heads of cities, city districts, counties, townships, and towns.
Thus, the deputies of the National People’s Congress are elected by the People’s Congresses of the level immediately below, which in turn have been elected by the levels immediately below them. The number of seats is proportionate to the population. Deputies are elected to five-year terms. The current (fourteenth) National Congress consists of 2,977 deputies who were elected in 2023
There is a nearly universal prejudice against indirect elections as somehow not really democratic. But we ought to think it through. At all levels higher than the local, the voters cannot directly know the candidates, so the most successful candidates are those that are capable of raising considerable sums of money to reach the people through campaign advertising. Direct elections at all levels, as is the norm in representative democracies, is a system that is structurally designed to ensure that the wealthy will control the political process through their great capacity to finance political campaigns.
In contrast to the structurally flawed system of representative democracies, the countries constructing socialism today are developing people’s democracies, in which systems of tiered direct and indirect elections favor the responsiveness of the State to the interests and needs of the people."
(https://charlesmckelvey.substack.com/p/xi-jinping-speaks-on-the-party)