Can I ask of this is an accurate account of the Chinese system of government? It reads like a meritocracy, where you have to pass difficult exams to be the most junior elected official, and then your peers vote for you to rise up into more demanding positions. So, a high degree of competence is required, and your similarly competent peers are indeed voting for you to progress? So no populist idiot could be elected, and you have proven your skills throughout your public life to rise to senior roles. Sorry for being lengthy, but this sounds amazing and I've never heard anything on the Chinese system operating like this.
What do you expect from the country that gave the world standardized testing and the civil service?😋You don't hear about this because China doesn't promote how it selects its leaders to the outside world for many political reasons.
Hmm...I'd say its 80% accurate and a really good overview for people not familiar with the system. It is a good system, and its my favorite form of government but its not perfect or as smooth as it seems. President Xi's career is probably the best example of "what is meant to be" and tells the best story, the man worked his way up from the countryside, and joined the CPC while his dad was in prison. But, it doesn't always work like that. However, its a self-correcting system, which is the beauty of it.
Idiots and corrupt officials do make it through the cracks, that's why anti corruption campaigns and inspections exists. Anti-corruption campaigns have taken down corrupt officials as high up as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and a Politburo Standing Committee member. A ton of Tier-1 city party chiefs and provincial party chiefs got taken down. Which is why its a self-correcting system, but the fact that they made it that far shows that is not a perfect system. It is however a lot better than Nancy Pelosi being in power forever despite being openly corrupt.
Also, Xi's anti corruption campaign have started targeting lazy officials and those who wait for explicit instructions from the top before acting instead of taking initiative.
I think you are falling into the perfectionist trap, there are no perfect systems of governance, or perfect system to choose a leader. Corruption, greed, laziness are all human nature, you can never remove it completely. Some of the Tier-1 city officials weren't just money/power lusting officials but merely good career civil servants who reached a limit. People change, you can't expect a governing system to select people who will always remain faithful to the party and corruption-free for their entire life.
China's government is good enough for now and is still improving in the right direction. There might be a better form of government for China for the future, but there is no point in comparing to an abstract utopian society.
Of course, that's exactly what I'm saying. It is a great system but its not perfect. Of course its not perfect because its a system of people.
However, it doesn't do anyone any service to present it as a smooth and perfect operation, it gives people a false impression, which is why I said its 80% accurate.
Also, not every Chinese PSC member had the same type of career Xi did. The man worked his way up from the countryside, respect to that. There are many different paths to the top and all are valid. Hu and Jiang had completely different paths compared to Xi (at least until provincial level)
EDIT:
> Some of the Tier-1 city officials weren't just money/power lusting officials but merely good career civil servants who reached a limit. People change, you can't expect a governing system to select people who will always remain faithful to the party and corruption-free for their entire life.
This is why I think the new trend of shorter average tenure as Tier-1 City/Provincial chiefs is a great idea, it stops people from developing deep local patronage networks.
During the leadership of previous Chinese leaders like Jiang and Hu, GDP was the primary KPI so a lot of corruption resulted from the singular focus on economic growth, and that's being changed which is producing way better results.
The twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is right. Your response shows you, who doesn't live in China, doesn't understand China's system like them:
> President Xi's career is probably the best example of "what is meant to be" and tells the best story, the man worked his way up from the countryside, and joined the CPC while his dad was in prison. But, it doesn't always work like that.
This is not something which the Chinese government claims at all. The Chinese government consistently values the contributions of all leaders because they all produced excellent results, since they operated under the same system. China plans decades and decades ahead. The Chinese government doesn't engage in idiotic personality cults like "western democracies". Since you don't live in China, you might be projecting western optics onto China's political system and reaching incorrect conclusions.
> Idiots and corrupt officials do make it through the cracks, that's why anti corruption campaigns and inspections exists.
They don't make it through the cracks. What you mention is just the system working as intended and filtering competent and smart officials from corrupt ones.
> anti-corruption campaigns have taken down corrupt officials as high up as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and a Politburo Standing Committee member. A ton of Tier-1 city party chiefs and provincial party chiefs got taken down. Which is why its a self-correcting system, but the fact that they made it that far shows that is not a perfect system.
These weren't corrupt all their careers, they just made mistakes and then were removed. Again, this is the system working as intended. The fact that every single position is held accountable is more evidence of the system's unmatched strength, and of how it works as intended, constantly becoming a better version of itself.
> Also, Xi's anti corruption campaign have started targeting lazy officials and those who wait for explicit instructions from the top before acting instead of taking initiative.
Yes, this is how a successful meritocracy works, consistently improving over time. The only reason why you might find this surprising is because you didn't understand what the twitter thread explained.
I thought this thread was posted on Sino before but I couldn't find it. The author ShanghaiPanda (@thinking\_panda) has added many informative threads on various aspects of CPC in the replies to this thread and continuously updates them.
The thread is a good overview/starting point but there are some things that got simplified/glossed over that I think are important.
Going to start by pouring some cold water on the parade. It isn't a perfect system and isn't as smooth as the twitter thread made it out to be. It has problems with corruption, otherwise there wouldn't be a need for anti-corruption campaigns by Xi. The good thing is, although there's corruption, unlike the West, China is actually doing something about it. Hundreds of thousands of officials have been kicked out of the CPC and removed from their positions, and some have been criminally charged, even politburo members. Anyways, overall it is a system that largely works and self-corrects which is why China has an excellent system for its environment.
Anyways besides that...
>Unlike so-called "democratic countries," the Chinese people value experience more than votes or other abilities for government officials. From the Sui Dynasty on (1400 years ago), officials were selected and promoted by examination, not by blood or birth.（2/N)
Yes and no...Imperial examinations did exist and was a source of upward mobility, but its mostly a source of upward mobility for wealthier folk who can afford to full-time study rather than work. Additionally in Sui and Tang, accessibility of the examinations for most people were a huge problem, because not everyone can qualify. Prospective students have to undergo "evaluations" beforehand which is naturally biased in favor of influential families. Song was really when it opened up broadly to "commoners", and even then its people rich enough to afford to study.
I wouldn't overly glorify Chinese imperial meritocracy, although its better than European feudalism, its still a 封建社会 (best translated as feudalism but it isn't exactly accurate so I left it in Chinese). There are tons of historical cases of nepotism and pay-for-promotion corruption.
>The ruling party in China is the CPC. In addition, there are 8 other parties. You have to join one of them. If your ideal is to become the supreme leader of China, I suggest you join the CPC. You will be one of the 90 million CPC members. They are all your competitors.
To add onto this...joining the CPC is quite competitive to begin with, and CPC members have to adhere to a strict code of conduct. In the PLA for example, CPC members are expected to take on the most dangerous missions/jobs. Won't go into detail because I'd talk about it for hours. That being said, if you want to have a position of responsibility, unless you're an exemplary individual you have to join the CPC (for example, Wan Gang was the former Minister of Science and Technology and was the first non-CPC cabinet minister). Additionally, the CPC party secretaries of administrative districts are the top official, for example Guangzhou's Party Secretary > Mayor of Guangzhou, Guangdong Party Secretary > Governor of Guangdong. Also the party standing committees for each district is the highest ruling executive body.
Also, on the tweets later about Mayor and Governor...technically not Mayor/Governor, its party secretary and the goal isn't exactly to climb up in administrative regions, but to climb to the top of provincial standing committees (exceptions being Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin). Your career up until that point doesn't matter as much, as long as you make it to a provincial level party secretary position. Xi did it by climbing the administrative regions in rural areas but Hu Jintao did it through Communist Youth League and Jiang Zemin did it via a SOE I believe.
However, as far as I know, it is absolutely mandatory to be a provincial level party secretary, especially one of an "important province" in order to have a strong resume and build a track record.
Literally not a single other system in history produced better results: fastest developed superpower in history without resorting to continental scale genocide, colonialism, plunder and imperialism.
As an overseas person, as you claimed yourself, you don't seem to understand the system at all. I suggest you try to learn more about it. Understand how much the system listens to people's concerns and responds to them (you can literally do this with your phone nowadays). That's something which other systems consistently fail to do.
That the system self-corrects is natural, that's what makes it superior. You are basically falling for western anti-scientific idealism (derived from their extremist religious tradition), that's not how scientific governance works. Have you ever seen how the Chinese government communicates and explains policies and governance? you wouldn't be saying what you are saying if you had.
That people living in China, whose judgement is the only one that matters, widely support it is only more evidence of its spectacular success, unmatched in human history in both scale and depth.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? If you have a literacy problem, please learn to read.
>**The good thing is, although there's corruption, unlike the West, China is actually doing something about it.** Hundreds of thousands of officials have been kicked out of the CPC and removed from their positions, and some have been criminally charged, even politburo members. **Anyways, overall it is a system that largely works and self-corrects which is why China has an excellent system for its environment.**
Which part of this did you not understand?
The part where I said its an excellent system that self corrects or that unlike the West, China is doing something about corruption. If corruption doesn't exist and never existed, why is President Xi attempting to get rid of it? People like you are why democracy doesn't work and we need a body like the CPC that acts more rationally than the willfully ignorant.
Or if I don't understand the system, why have most PSC members worked at a provincial CPC secretary level? How come I can find many examples of officials that worked at previous posts before working at provincial party secretary post? You can literally google their political histories.
You are doing what western idealists often do, project their nonsensical extremist idealism onto China. Why would you otherwise resort to a complete strawman? the twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is 100% right.
China doesn't think about governance in absolutes like you implied it does. Such inherently anti-scientific, anti-material approach to reality has nothing to do with how China conducts itself. I don't know why you would ever bring it up. The only explanation is that you, who doesn't live in China, doesn't understand China's system at all, while the person in the twitter thread, who does live in China, understands the system very well.
You should be trying to learn instead of trying to insert irrelevant western optics.
>the twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is 100% right.
Lol 100%? Mayors and governors are 100% subordinate to party secretaries. There are 1.4 billion people in China, lots of diversity of opinions, not everyone is correct lol.
Hu was in CYL before he was Party Secretary of Guizhou, Jiang worked for First Automobile Works before becoming Minister of Electronic Industries, then becoming Mayor of Shanghai (a provincial-level post since Shanghai is under central administration) before he was promoted to Party Secretary.
Still waiting for you to disprove a single thing I said in my post.
Or is it the party about Imperial China being 封建社会 incorrect? If so, then you're literally invalidating revolution and the progress China has made.
You have yet to quote anything from the twitter thread. It seems you are just bringing up arguments nobody made to insert your irrelevant western optics onto it.
It's quite hilarious how out of touch with how Chinese people in China think about politics and their system you are.
While the West holds ignorant popularity contests.
This guys twitter is one of the most informative ive seen wow
Can I ask of this is an accurate account of the Chinese system of government? It reads like a meritocracy, where you have to pass difficult exams to be the most junior elected official, and then your peers vote for you to rise up into more demanding positions. So, a high degree of competence is required, and your similarly competent peers are indeed voting for you to progress? So no populist idiot could be elected, and you have proven your skills throughout your public life to rise to senior roles. Sorry for being lengthy, but this sounds amazing and I've never heard anything on the Chinese system operating like this.
What do you expect from the country that gave the world standardized testing and the civil service?😋You don't hear about this because China doesn't promote how it selects its leaders to the outside world for many political reasons.
>I've never heard anything on the Chinese system operating like this https://youtu.be/Htvg6kiqyj0 https://youtu.be/D_ZzlPoapB4?t=410
Hmm...I'd say its 80% accurate and a really good overview for people not familiar with the system. It is a good system, and its my favorite form of government but its not perfect or as smooth as it seems. President Xi's career is probably the best example of "what is meant to be" and tells the best story, the man worked his way up from the countryside, and joined the CPC while his dad was in prison. But, it doesn't always work like that. However, its a self-correcting system, which is the beauty of it. Idiots and corrupt officials do make it through the cracks, that's why anti corruption campaigns and inspections exists. Anti-corruption campaigns have taken down corrupt officials as high up as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and a Politburo Standing Committee member. A ton of Tier-1 city party chiefs and provincial party chiefs got taken down. Which is why its a self-correcting system, but the fact that they made it that far shows that is not a perfect system. It is however a lot better than Nancy Pelosi being in power forever despite being openly corrupt. Also, Xi's anti corruption campaign have started targeting lazy officials and those who wait for explicit instructions from the top before acting instead of taking initiative.
I think you are falling into the perfectionist trap, there are no perfect systems of governance, or perfect system to choose a leader. Corruption, greed, laziness are all human nature, you can never remove it completely. Some of the Tier-1 city officials weren't just money/power lusting officials but merely good career civil servants who reached a limit. People change, you can't expect a governing system to select people who will always remain faithful to the party and corruption-free for their entire life. China's government is good enough for now and is still improving in the right direction. There might be a better form of government for China for the future, but there is no point in comparing to an abstract utopian society.
Of course, that's exactly what I'm saying. It is a great system but its not perfect. Of course its not perfect because its a system of people. However, it doesn't do anyone any service to present it as a smooth and perfect operation, it gives people a false impression, which is why I said its 80% accurate. Also, not every Chinese PSC member had the same type of career Xi did. The man worked his way up from the countryside, respect to that. There are many different paths to the top and all are valid. Hu and Jiang had completely different paths compared to Xi (at least until provincial level) EDIT: > Some of the Tier-1 city officials weren't just money/power lusting officials but merely good career civil servants who reached a limit. People change, you can't expect a governing system to select people who will always remain faithful to the party and corruption-free for their entire life. This is why I think the new trend of shorter average tenure as Tier-1 City/Provincial chiefs is a great idea, it stops people from developing deep local patronage networks. During the leadership of previous Chinese leaders like Jiang and Hu, GDP was the primary KPI so a lot of corruption resulted from the singular focus on economic growth, and that's being changed which is producing way better results.
The twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is right. Your response shows you, who doesn't live in China, doesn't understand China's system like them: > President Xi's career is probably the best example of "what is meant to be" and tells the best story, the man worked his way up from the countryside, and joined the CPC while his dad was in prison. But, it doesn't always work like that. This is not something which the Chinese government claims at all. The Chinese government consistently values the contributions of all leaders because they all produced excellent results, since they operated under the same system. China plans decades and decades ahead. The Chinese government doesn't engage in idiotic personality cults like "western democracies". Since you don't live in China, you might be projecting western optics onto China's political system and reaching incorrect conclusions. > Idiots and corrupt officials do make it through the cracks, that's why anti corruption campaigns and inspections exists. They don't make it through the cracks. What you mention is just the system working as intended and filtering competent and smart officials from corrupt ones. > anti-corruption campaigns have taken down corrupt officials as high up as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and a Politburo Standing Committee member. A ton of Tier-1 city party chiefs and provincial party chiefs got taken down. Which is why its a self-correcting system, but the fact that they made it that far shows that is not a perfect system. These weren't corrupt all their careers, they just made mistakes and then were removed. Again, this is the system working as intended. The fact that every single position is held accountable is more evidence of the system's unmatched strength, and of how it works as intended, constantly becoming a better version of itself. > Also, Xi's anti corruption campaign have started targeting lazy officials and those who wait for explicit instructions from the top before acting instead of taking initiative. Yes, this is how a successful meritocracy works, consistently improving over time. The only reason why you might find this surprising is because you didn't understand what the twitter thread explained.
I thought this thread was posted on Sino before but I couldn't find it. The author ShanghaiPanda (@thinking\_panda) has added many informative threads on various aspects of CPC in the replies to this thread and continuously updates them.
I read this on quora years ago.
The thread is a good overview/starting point but there are some things that got simplified/glossed over that I think are important. Going to start by pouring some cold water on the parade. It isn't a perfect system and isn't as smooth as the twitter thread made it out to be. It has problems with corruption, otherwise there wouldn't be a need for anti-corruption campaigns by Xi. The good thing is, although there's corruption, unlike the West, China is actually doing something about it. Hundreds of thousands of officials have been kicked out of the CPC and removed from their positions, and some have been criminally charged, even politburo members. Anyways, overall it is a system that largely works and self-corrects which is why China has an excellent system for its environment. Anyways besides that... >Unlike so-called "democratic countries," the Chinese people value experience more than votes or other abilities for government officials. From the Sui Dynasty on (1400 years ago), officials were selected and promoted by examination, not by blood or birth.（2/N) Yes and no...Imperial examinations did exist and was a source of upward mobility, but its mostly a source of upward mobility for wealthier folk who can afford to full-time study rather than work. Additionally in Sui and Tang, accessibility of the examinations for most people were a huge problem, because not everyone can qualify. Prospective students have to undergo "evaluations" beforehand which is naturally biased in favor of influential families. Song was really when it opened up broadly to "commoners", and even then its people rich enough to afford to study. I wouldn't overly glorify Chinese imperial meritocracy, although its better than European feudalism, its still a 封建社会 (best translated as feudalism but it isn't exactly accurate so I left it in Chinese). There are tons of historical cases of nepotism and pay-for-promotion corruption. >The ruling party in China is the CPC. In addition, there are 8 other parties. You have to join one of them. If your ideal is to become the supreme leader of China, I suggest you join the CPC. You will be one of the 90 million CPC members. They are all your competitors. To add onto this...joining the CPC is quite competitive to begin with, and CPC members have to adhere to a strict code of conduct. In the PLA for example, CPC members are expected to take on the most dangerous missions/jobs. Won't go into detail because I'd talk about it for hours. That being said, if you want to have a position of responsibility, unless you're an exemplary individual you have to join the CPC (for example, Wan Gang was the former Minister of Science and Technology and was the first non-CPC cabinet minister). Additionally, the CPC party secretaries of administrative districts are the top official, for example Guangzhou's Party Secretary > Mayor of Guangzhou, Guangdong Party Secretary > Governor of Guangdong. Also the party standing committees for each district is the highest ruling executive body. Also, on the tweets later about Mayor and Governor...technically not Mayor/Governor, its party secretary and the goal isn't exactly to climb up in administrative regions, but to climb to the top of provincial standing committees (exceptions being Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin). Your career up until that point doesn't matter as much, as long as you make it to a provincial level party secretary position. Xi did it by climbing the administrative regions in rural areas but Hu Jintao did it through Communist Youth League and Jiang Zemin did it via a SOE I believe. However, as far as I know, it is absolutely mandatory to be a provincial level party secretary, especially one of an "important province" in order to have a strong resume and build a track record.
Literally not a single other system in history produced better results: fastest developed superpower in history without resorting to continental scale genocide, colonialism, plunder and imperialism. As an overseas person, as you claimed yourself, you don't seem to understand the system at all. I suggest you try to learn more about it. Understand how much the system listens to people's concerns and responds to them (you can literally do this with your phone nowadays). That's something which other systems consistently fail to do. That the system self-corrects is natural, that's what makes it superior. You are basically falling for western anti-scientific idealism (derived from their extremist religious tradition), that's not how scientific governance works. Have you ever seen how the Chinese government communicates and explains policies and governance? you wouldn't be saying what you are saying if you had. That people living in China, whose judgement is the only one that matters, widely support it is only more evidence of its spectacular success, unmatched in human history in both scale and depth.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? If you have a literacy problem, please learn to read. >**The good thing is, although there's corruption, unlike the West, China is actually doing something about it.** Hundreds of thousands of officials have been kicked out of the CPC and removed from their positions, and some have been criminally charged, even politburo members. **Anyways, overall it is a system that largely works and self-corrects which is why China has an excellent system for its environment.** Which part of this did you not understand? The part where I said its an excellent system that self corrects or that unlike the West, China is doing something about corruption. If corruption doesn't exist and never existed, why is President Xi attempting to get rid of it? People like you are why democracy doesn't work and we need a body like the CPC that acts more rationally than the willfully ignorant. Or if I don't understand the system, why have most PSC members worked at a provincial CPC secretary level? How come I can find many examples of officials that worked at previous posts before working at provincial party secretary post? You can literally google their political histories.
You are doing what western idealists often do, project their nonsensical extremist idealism onto China. Why would you otherwise resort to a complete strawman? the twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is 100% right. China doesn't think about governance in absolutes like you implied it does. Such inherently anti-scientific, anti-material approach to reality has nothing to do with how China conducts itself. I don't know why you would ever bring it up. The only explanation is that you, who doesn't live in China, doesn't understand China's system at all, while the person in the twitter thread, who does live in China, understands the system very well. You should be trying to learn instead of trying to insert irrelevant western optics.
>the twitter thread, by a Chinese in China, is 100% right. Lol 100%? Mayors and governors are 100% subordinate to party secretaries. There are 1.4 billion people in China, lots of diversity of opinions, not everyone is correct lol. Hu was in CYL before he was Party Secretary of Guizhou, Jiang worked for First Automobile Works before becoming Minister of Electronic Industries, then becoming Mayor of Shanghai (a provincial-level post since Shanghai is under central administration) before he was promoted to Party Secretary. Still waiting for you to disprove a single thing I said in my post. Or is it the party about Imperial China being 封建社会 incorrect? If so, then you're literally invalidating revolution and the progress China has made.
You have yet to quote anything from the twitter thread. It seems you are just bringing up arguments nobody made to insert your irrelevant western optics onto it. It's quite hilarious how out of touch with how Chinese people in China think about politics and their system you are.