Political Culture Of China Politics Essay

China is a country with very rich culture. People of China are currently thriving with confidence to build a well-off society. They are also endeavoring to build a democratic, strong, modern, culturally advanced, prosperous and socialist country. Improving and perusing multi party cooperation system is helpful to in development and promotion of sustainable development of socially productive forces, realizing the overall progress of society, maintaining social and political stability, accelerate the development of social culture and ethical progress and construction of tuneful socialist society.

In China, multi-party cooperation system will continue to develop with continuous development of socialist democratic politics and political system in China. Following the road of development of a socialist political system with specific characteristics of Chinese, is necessary in order to pursue and improve the basic political system. Learning from the other political civilization of mankind can be fruitful in this context. This paper will discuss the characteristics of Chinese culture, its political system and effect of political system and culture on the society and how these forces bring social change altogether.

A brief overview of culture of China

China has very rich culture. It one of the oldest and complex cultures in the world. Chinese culture is influenced by diverse ethnic groups and long history. These diverse ethnic groups have different traditions and customs between different towns, cities and provinces. Regardless of all its diversity, Chinese culture is dominated by Confucian value system. It is a complicated system of social behavior, moral values, philosophical and political and religious thoughts and has great influence on the history and culture of China. This system focuses on the importance of mutual harmony, good relations with others, self restraints and promotes social harmony. Confucianism also gives importance to authority and respect for hierarchy. This system requires all people to struggle for being perfect gentlemen and treat in human manner with all. Due to its dominance, this system has been embedded in business culture and behaviors of people of China. Chinese prefer to develop, cultivate and maintain a strong personal relationship before doing business (Hucker, 1995).  There are total 56 ethnic groups and Han Chinese is in majority among these groups. This made up 91.2% of total population of the china. From the point of view of religion, pluralism of religion is present in China. Christianity, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism and some other small religions can be found in China. Most of the business dealings are negotiated on the dinner table in China as they refer to do business with people they know well. Relationship and degree of association with person is determined after serving food at the dinner table.

Political culture of China:

Politics is an important part of every culture. Political cultures have relevance with moral types. In China, ethical and social life is closely attached with political life. When moral types are realized and embedded in political culture, ethics and social aspect is expanded in political life. During the course of developing civilization of socialism, top priority in the political culture of china is to term new values system into political civilization of socialism (Hucker, 1995) , to learn from political civilization’s achievements, developing a socialism political culture, coordinating with social legal norms, confirming values with market economy of socialism, running of the country according to laws in Unison, and embedding all these points as basin content in political system in modern China.

Basic political system of China

Basic political system of China is congress system. It is stated by the PRC constitution that power of state is belonged to people. Local people’s congresses and NPC are organs representing the people exercising state power. In 1954, first NPC marked the establishment of the system. There are four main powers and functions of people’s congress. Supervision, legislation, appointment of officials, and taking decision about major issues are the basin functions of this system. Chinese people exercise their state through people’s congress system and it is the major reflection of how Chinese exercise their power.

Multi-Party Cooperation and Political Consultative System

Under the leadership of communist party of China (CPC), political consultation and multi-party cooperation forms the basic party system in china. CPC and other democratic parties jointly created multi-party cooperation in the long lasting process of revolution of China, its reforms and construction (Solomon, 1971). This system had made great progress after third plenary session of CPC committee in 1978. It was conceived in democratic revolution period and it was established after the founding of PRC in 1949.

Multi-Party Cooperation

Party system in China is different from the western capitalist countries where multi-party or two parties system is in practice. It is also different from one party system in few countries. The distinct feature of Chinese system includes the following. CPC play major role, it acts as ruling party other parties take part in management and discussion of state affairs in cooperation with CPC. This relationship of CPC and other parties is based on the principal of mutual supervision and long term coexistence and treating each other with sincerity and sharing good and bad things equally. CPC and all other parties follow PRC as basic code of conduct. Other parties enjoy political freedom, legal status and organizational independence within constitutional obligations and rights. Existence and development of multi-party system cooperation and political consultation is provided by constitution. The advantages of this system under the leadership of CPC is that it can achieve democratic participation, it can pool the wisdom of democratic parties, people from different fields of life (Solomon, 1971) and mass organizations to promote democratic and scientific decision making of government at all levels and party in power. This system realizes that unity and centralization and develops unified plans with great concern for interests of people from different sections. Multi-party system can be helpful in overcoming the problem of insufficient supervision which is commonly observed under rule of one-party and cause disputes of different parties.

System of Ethnic Regional Autonomy

It is also a basic political system of China. Ethnically autonomous areas in China are divided into three basic levels. These levels include autonomous counties, regions and autonomous prefectures. Currently there are 155 ethnic autonomous areas which include 120 counties, 30 prefectures and 5 regions. From ethnic minorities, 44 of 55 have their own autonomous areas. As a supplement to autonomous areas (Martin, 2010), China has established 1,173 autonomous townships that are equivalent to townships of ethnic minorities living in compact communities.11 ethnic communities are included in where regional autonomy has not implemented due to the fact that the habitats and populations of these communities are relatively small and 9 ethnic communities have set up their autonomous townships. In accordance with Law of regional autonomy of ethnic group and constitution, right of self government of ethnic autonomous areas is fully guaranteed.

These autonomous states, manage their internal affairs independently in their areas and have right to exercise separate regulations and autonomy and power to formulate regulations on the exercise of their autonomous rights. They have freedom to develop their written and spoken languages. Rights and freedom to develop and practice their religious beliefs is protected and respected by state.