Chinese Foreign Policy Essay

Specific portfolio. (See â€Å"Collective Leadership.†) To ensure Party control, the top-ranked members of the PSC serve concurrently as the heads of other parts of the political system. The top ranked PSC member, Party General Secretary Hu Jintao, for example, serves concurrently as head of the military, in his capacity as head of Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and as the head of State, in his capacity as State President. The second-ranked PSC member, Wu Bangguo, serves as Chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC), while the third-ranked PSC member, Wen Jiabao, serves as Premier of the State Council, and the fourth-ranked member, Jia Qinglin, heads the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and oversees the Party’s relations with non-Communist groups. Portfolios for other PSC members include the propaganda system; management of the Party bureaucracy and Hong Kong and Macau; finance and economics; Party discipline; and the internal security system. 32 PSC members also head Party â€Å"Leading Small Groups† (LSGs) for their policy areas. LSGs are secretive bodies intended to facilitate cross-agency coordination in implementation of Politburo Standing Committee decisions. The National Security Leading Small Group and the Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group, for example, are both headed by Party General Secretary Hu Jintao. The next highest decision-making body is the full Politburo, which, with the suspension of the disgraced former Chongqing Party Secretary, Bo Xilai, now comprises 24 officials. In addition to the nine members of the PSC, Politburo members include the heads of major departments of the Party bureaucracy, the two highest ranking officers in the Chinese military, State Council Vice Premiers, a State Councilor, and Party leaders from important cities and provinces. The current Politburo has only one female member. Because of its relatively unwieldy size and the geographic diversity of its members, the full Politburo is not involved in day-to-day decision-making. In 2011, it met eight times, with its meetings often focused on a single major policy area or on preparations for major national meetings. According to the Party’s constitution, the PSC and Politburo derive their power from the Central Committee, whose full and alternate members together â€Å"elect† the Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, and Party General Secretary, and â€Å"decide† on the composition of the Party’s Central Military Commission.34 In practice, incumbent top officials provide a list of nominees to the Central Committee, which ratifies the leadership’s nominees.35 The current nearly 400-member Central Committee (including alternates) is made up of leaders from the provinces (41.5%), central ministries (22.6%), the military (17.5 %), central Party organizations (5.9%), and stateowned enterprises, educational institutions, â€Å"mass organizations† such as the Communist Youth League, and other constituencies (12.4%). The National People’s Congress (NPC) The third major political institution in China is the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s unicameral national legislature. According to Article 57 of China’s constitution, the NPC is â€Å"the highest organ of state power.† The Constitution tasks the NPC with overseeing the Presidency, the State Council, the State Central Military Commission, the Supreme People’s Court, and China’s national level public prosecutor’s office, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. In practice, however, the NPC’s powers are severely limited, and the entire entity operates under the leadership of the Communist Party. The public theater of the NPC’s work is centered around its ten-day-long annual full session, held every March and attended by all of the NPC’s nearly 3,000 deputies. The next full session, in March 2013, will mark the start of a new five-year Congress, and is expected to approve a major leadership transition, including a new President and Premier, and new Vice Premiers and State Councilors. At the annual full sessions, NPC deputies almost always vote to approve the reports, laws, and candidates put before them, usually by overwhelming margins, leading many observers to describe the NPC as a â€Å"rubber stamp† parliament. NPC delegates do occasionally push back, however. At the March 2012 session of the NPC, for example, a record 20% of deputies withheld their support from the Ministry of Finance’s budget report, reportedly in protest over the Ministry’s longstanding refusal to accept any NPC suggestions for revisions to the budget.47 (Unlike the U.S. Congress, the National People’s Congress does not pass spending bills. Rather, at the annual full session each year, it votes to approve the budget presented by the Minister of Finance.) The NPC also makes revisions to the Premier’s annual report on the work of the government, the State’s most important policy document. Out of the public eye, individual committees and the Standing Committee exercise more meaningful influence. They shape legislation and can exercise a degree of oversight over government entities through â€Å"inspection† visits and committee reports. The power of individual NPC deputies to exercise oversight is largely restricted to the right to submit â€Å"proposals† advocating for reforms or demanding better implementation of laws or regulations, to which officials are required to respond in writing. Because the annual full session of the congress is so brief, much of the NPC’s work is undertaken by its approximately 175-member Standing Committee, which meets about half a dozen times a year.48 Other important NPC bodies include nine specialized committees and a legislative affairs work committee, all of which review and revise draft legislation before sending it to the Standing Committee or the full Congress for action. Like the State Council, the NPC has a Party organization embedded within it. The NPC’s chairman serves on the Politburo Standing Committee and is currently the Party’s number-two ranked official. NPC deputies are not directly elected. The Communist Party draws up lists of nominees, based in part on potential nominees’ perceived loyalty to the Party. Thirty-five electoral units, most of them provincial-level People’s Congresses, then vote upon the Party’s nominees. The process is modestly competitive in that the Party nominates 20% to 50% more candidates than available positions and those with the most votes are elected to serve as NPC deputies. NPC election rules stipulate quotas for the representation of ethnic minority groups, the military, women, and other groups, including the Party itself. Because China rejects any separation of powers, the President, Premier, and other top leaders are all NPC deputies. 49 Deputies serve for five-year terms. The NPC is the uppermost layer of a nation-wide system of People’s Congresses. These congresses are loosely linked together in process and function. Only deputies for the lowest level of People’s Congresses are directly elected. Traditionally, even at the lowest level, candidate lists are controlled by the Party, and elections are uncontested. Since 2011, however, China has seen a wave of independent candidates contesting elections for People’s Congresses in city districts and townships. Most such candidates have faced forms of official harassment, including intrusive surveillance, extra-legal detention, intimidation of their supporters, and election irregularities designed to keep them from appearing on ballots, but some have succeeded in being elected to office. Corruption Corruption in China is widespread and takes many forms, from lavish gifts and expensive meals bestowed on officials by those seeking favors, to bribes explicitly offered in exchange for permits and approvals, to embezzlement of state funds, exemption of friends and relatives from enforcement of laws and regulations, and the appointment of relatives to lucrative jobs in stateowned companies. A 2011 report released by China’s Central Bank estimated that from the mid- 1990s to 2008, corrupt officials who fled overseas took with them $120 billion in stolen funds.28 The CCP uses its Central Discipline Inspection Commission (CDIC) to police its own ranks for corruption, an arrangement fraught with conflicts of interest. As noted above, the Party metes out its own punishments for wrongdoing by its members, and has sole discretion about whether to hand members over to the state judiciary for investigation and possible prosecution. (See â€Å"Weak Rule of Law and Ineffective Policy Implementation and Enforcement.†) Critics charge that CDIC investigations are frequently politically motivated, even if they uncover real wrongdoing. Officials who keep on the right side of their superiors and colleagues may engage in large-scale corruption, while other officials may be investigated for lesser infractions because they have fallen afoul of powerful officials.