70 years of new China’s parliament: the form of the state and the features of parliamentarism

In 2024, the National People’s Congress celebrates the 70th anniversary of its existence, with its first session held in Beijing in September 1954. Over the years, the Chinese parliamentary system has proven its stability and effectiveness. The laws adopted by the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee are aimed at implementing the decisions of the ruling Communist Party of China. The PRC operates under a special political system that does not involve separation of powers, checks and balances, or opposition parties. The National People’s Congress is a unicameral parlament that occupies an important role in the political mechanism. Doctrinally, it acts as the collective head of state. The National People’s Congress cements the entire system of supreme organs of state power and state administration. It is responsible for electing the country’s highest officials and enshrining the CCP’s political agenda into the law. By form of state, the PRC is a unitary socialist republic characterized by a people’s democratic dictatorship. Modern China, constructed according to the Soviet model, is characterized by a partocratic governmental regime. This effectively means that state power is concentrated in the hands of the central and local structures of the CCP. The existing system is based on democratic centralism, which presupposes the legal supremacy of the National People’s Congress over all other state organs, and the CCP’s political dominance over all existing parties and social forces. The unity of political and state power eliminates internal contradictions and prevents any extra-systemic opposition that could undermine the foundations of statehood. The current system contributes to the unification of the nation around the CCP, ensures the effectiveness of state governance, the successful fight against existing challenges and threats to Chinese statehood, the stable socio-economic development of the country, and the strengthening of its state and political institutions. China’s achievements in the political sphere and in the field of parliamentarism are extremely relevant to us. The reforms carried out in modern Russia require an understanding of the peculiarities of China’s political and state structure for the possible use of its experience in the Russian parliament’s practical activities.