Chinese Foreign Policy Essay

Specific portfolio. (See Collective Leadership.) To pick up companionship control, the treetop-ranked members of the PSC serve concurrently as the flings of different parts of the political system. The top ranked PSC member, society General Secretary Hu Jintao, for example, serves concurrently as head of the troops, in his capacity as head of Chairman of the central Military Commission, and as the head of land, in his capacity as State President. The second-ranked PSC member, Wu Bangguo, serves as Chairman of the National nations Congress (NPC), mend the triplet-ranked PSC member, Wen Jiabao, serves as Premier of the State Council, and the fourth-ranked member, Jia Qinglin, heads the Chinese populates Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and oversees the partys relations with non-commie 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 int ernal security system. 32 PSC members also head Party Leading picayune Groups (LSGs) for their policy ranges. LSGs are secretive bodies mean to facilitate cross-agency coordination in implementation of Politburo stand up military commission decisions. The National credential Leading Small Group and the Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group, for example, are both headed by Party General Secretary Hu Jintao.The coterminous highest decision-making body is the well(p) Politburo, which, with the suspension of the disgraced former Chongqing Party Secretary, Bo Xilai, straight 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 integrity female member. Because of its relatively unwieldy size and the geographic diversity of its members, the proficient Politburo is not involved in day-to-day decision-making. In 2011, it met eight times, with its meetings a good deal focused on a single major policy area or on preparations for major national meetings. check to the Partys constitution, the PSC and Politburo derive their power from the primaeval Committee, whose copious and alternate members together elect(ip) the Politburo, Politburo Standing Committee, and Party General Secretary, and decide on the composition of the Partys Central Military Commission.34 In practice, incumbent top officials leave behind a list of nominees to the Central Committee, which ratifies the leaderships nominees.35 The current some 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, mass organizations such as the Communist Youth League, and other constituencies (12.4%).The National Peoples Congress (NPC)The third major political institution in China is the National Peoples Congress (NPC), Chinas unicameral national legislature. According to Article 57 of Chinas constitution, the NPC is the highest organ of state power. The system tasks the NPC with overseeing the Presidency, the State Council, the State Central Military Commission, the Supreme Peoples Court, and Chinas national level public prosecutors office, the Supreme Peoples Procuratorate. In practice, however, the NPCs powers are in earnest limited, and the entire entity operates under the leadership of the Communist Party.The public theater of the NPCs work is centered around its ten-day-long annual full session, held every present and attended by all of the NPCs nearly 3,000 deputies. The next full session, in establish 2013, will mark the start of a bleak five-year Congress, and is expected to approve a major leadership transition, including a vernal President and Premier, and new Vice Premiers and State Councilors. At the annual full sessions, NPC deputies al well-nigh always take to approve the reports, laws, and campaigners put forward them, usually by overwhelming margins, leading many a(prenominal) observers to describe the NPC as a 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 Finances budget report, reportedly in protest over the Ministrys longstanding refusal to accept any NPC suggestions for revisions to the budget.47 (Unlike the U.S. Congress, the National Peoples Congress does not pass spending bills. Rather, at the annual full session all(prenominal) year, it votes to approve the budget presented by the Minister of Finance.) The NPC also makes revisions to the Premiers annual report on the work of the government, the States most import ant policy document.Out of the public eye, individual committees and the Standing Committee crop more meaningful influence. They shape legislation and can exercise a degree of oversight over government entities through control visits and committee reports. The power of individual NPC deputies to exercise oversight is largely curb to the right to submit 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 sexual relation is so brief, much of the NPCs work is undertaken by its approximately 175-member Standing Committee, which meets about half a dozen times a year.48 former(a) 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. the likes of the State Council, the NPC has a Party or ganization embedded within it. The NPCs chairman serves on the Politburo Standing Committee and is currently the Partys number-two ranked official. NPC deputies are not directly elective.The Communist Party draws up lists of nominees, based in part on potential nominees perceived committal to the Party. Thirty-five electoral units, most of them provincial-level Peoples Congresses, then vote upon the Partys 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 nonage 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 grade of a nation-wide system of Peoples Congresses. These c ongresses are loosely coupled together in process and function. Only deputies for the lowest level of Peoples 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 nonsymbiotic candidates contesting elections for Peoples Congresses in city districts and townships. Most such candidates capture faced forms of official harassment, including intrusive surveillance, extra-legal detention, intimidation of their supporters, and election irregularities designed to hold in them from appearing on ballots, but some have succeeded in beingness elected to office.CorruptionCorruption 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 enf orcement of laws and regulations, and the appointment of relatives to lucrative jobs in stateowned companies. A 2011 report released by Chinas Central rely 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 pregnant 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 work bench for investigation and possible prosecution. (See Weak Rule of Law and Ineffective insurance policy Implementation and Enforcement.) Critics charge that CDIC investigations are frequently politically motivated, even if they let out real wrongdoing. Officials who keep on the right side of their superiors and colleagues may muster in in large-scale corruption, while other officials m ay be investigated for lesser infractions because they have fallen afoul of powerful officials.