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The process of formation of the institution of democratic centralism in China

Обновлено 26.02.2024 05:38

 

The article is devoted to the study of issues related to the process of formation of the institution of democratic centralism in the People's Republic of China, which is one of the largest political, trade and economic partners of the Russian Federation. The issues of legal regulation of the institute of democratic centralism under the legislation of the People's Republic of China in Russian comparative studies have not been practically studied, therefore, the purpose of the presented article is to acquaint the reader with the main trends in the development of this phenomenon in China. In the course of the study, the author argues that the main historical reason for the adoption of democratic centralism in China as the main principle of public administration is the adoption by the People's Political Advisory Council of key legislative acts of the constitutional basis of the new state and the creation of the PRC on October 1, 1949. The author concludes that the CCP's ideological platform is based, among other things, on the principle of democratic centralism, which is aimed at the grassroots of party members, and senior managers should actively interact with representatives of the lower-level party strata. The article summarizes that the periods of development of democratic centralism in the public administration system of the People's Republic of China over thirty years consist of many events, the legal consequences of which allow us to speak about their constitutional nature only within the framework of the original version of the 1954 Constitution and the 1978 Constitution, the text of which was transformed into the modern version of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China (2018 edition), in the process of what caused the transformation of the institution of pre-reform democratic centralism within the framework of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

Keywords: democratic centralism, Communist Party, Constitution, People's Republic of China, legislation.

 

The process of formation and development of the institution of democratic centralism in the People's Republic of China (hereinafter - PRC, China) is characterized by specific features and has a long history. The legal order of the People's Republic of China <1> as a whole can be characterized as a kind of symbiosis of ancient legist traditions, modern legislation based on the concept of socialism with Chinese specifics, the reception of institutions of Romano-German law and legal institutions of the former USSR. It is also worth noting that when regulating various spheres of public life in the legal culture of China, the primacy of traditional moral norms over the norms of law is observed <2>, which has a significant impact on all levels of legal regulation, including the institution of democratic centralism.

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<1> Sevalnev V.V. Legal regulation of anti-corruption in China // Journal of Russian Law. 2018. N 2(69). pp. 69-74.

<2> For more details, see: Troshchinsky P.V. Modern legislation of the People's Republic of China: problems and prospects of development // Journal of Foreign Legislation and Comparative Jurisprudence. 2016. N 3(58). pp. 24-31.

 

The Chinese basis of harmony in social and legal relations is formed in the ancient canons on the need for balanced coexistence and development of the polar principles - yin and yang, which are an integral part of the surrounding nature, the global law of the universe. According to ancient Chinese teachings, the statements that light is good and darkness is evil are not absolute.

Maintaining the right balance is also characterized by the relationship between democracy and centralism as a dialectical connection of two parts within one whole, which explains why the search for balance requires attention to both parts, but not always in equal proportion. Both elements should be present all the time, but if one part is neglected to some extent, this should be adequately reflected in the second <3>.

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<3> Salmenkari T. (2006) Theoretical Implications of Democratic Centralism.

 

An analysis of historical sources of Chinese law shows that their content contains democratic elements of subordination of the minority to the majority (mainly at the level of community norms) and the mandatory (imperative) nature of decisions of a higher authority for lower-level subjects and the entire population.

The legal literature uses the historical definition of the institution of democratic centralism as a combination of the following elements <4>:

- selection of the party's governing bodies from top to bottom;

- provision by the party body of a periodic report on its activities to the relevant party organization;

- observance of strict party discipline with subordination of the minority to the majority;

- the absolute binding nature of the decisions of the higher bodies of the party for the lower bodies and for all members of the party.

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<4> History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course. New York: International Publishers, 1939. P. 198.

 

Thus, a brief historical analysis of the sources of Chinese law and philosophy allows us to formulate a conclusion about the presence since ancient times in Chinese law of democratic ideas of justice, public morality, acceptance by the majority of generally accepted rules and other manifestations of democratic centralism based on the ancient Chinese philosophical priority of harmony as the unity of the development of opposites, which logically correlate with the democracy of the ideology of the Communist Party of China (more - The CPC) and the centralism (imperative) of the party structure in the public administration system of the People's Republic of China.

The medieval and modern (before 1949) history of Chinese law is characterized by feudal and colonial features. The reform of the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century shows China's gradual entry into the process of globalization.

Since 1840, the Qing Dynasty government has lost most of the wars and had to sign a number of unprofitable treaties with Western countries. Beijing, the capital of the Qing Empire, was conquered in 1900 by the forces of an Alliance of Eight Nations (including the Russian Empire). From 1902 until the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, great efforts were made to modernize China's legal system with the participation of mainly Japanese legal scholars, the Ministry of Legal Reform developed various codified sources of law, such as the Criminal Code of the Qing Dynasty, the Civil and Criminal Procedure Laws of the Qing Dynasty, the law "On Business of the Qing Dynasty" and others .

In the period from 1911 to 1927, China was actually under the leadership of various military representatives of the Eight-Nation Alliance, who did not pay much attention to China's legal reform. In 1928, China was reunified under the auspices of the national Government, for which legal reform became an important part of the work program. For the first time in the history of China, a comprehensive modern legal system was created in the form of a collection of laws on branches of law characteristic of the Roman model: constitutional law, criminal law, civil law, criminal procedure, civil procedure and administrative law <5>.

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<5> Chang D. Modernization of the Chinese Legal System: A Brief Historical Review. 2012.

 

July 1, 1921 is considered the founding date of the CPC. In 1922, the Second National Congress of the CPC formulated the supreme guiding principle of building a communist society, as well as the foundations of national unity and independence. The resolution on the third revision of the CPC Constitution, which was adopted in June 1927, established that the guiding principle of the party is democratic centralism. From that moment on, the institution of democratic centralism became legally enshrined in the norms of the CPC Charter <6>.

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<6> Wang Chuanzhi. Democratic Centralism: The Core Mechanism in China's Political System // English Edition of Qiushi Journal. 2013. Vol. 5. No. 4.

 

In 1949, the People's Revolutionary Army of China, under the leadership of the CPC, defeated the reactionary forces of the Kuomintang Party and attracted the national bourgeoisie to its side to interact with the working class and the working peasantry in the format of the People's Political Consultative Council of China (hereinafter - NPKSK) <7>.

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<7> Liu Shao-qi. On the draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China. Materials of the first session of the National People's Congress. M.: Pravda, 1954. p. 11.

 

The People's Political Consultative Council, convened for the first time in September 1949, adopted key legislative acts of the constitutional basis of the new State. On October 1, 1949, the creation of the People's Republic of China was proclaimed by the Chairman of the NPC Mao Zedong.

Before the adoption of the first Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1954, the highest state authority of the People's Republic of China was the Central Government People's Council, which was formed by the NPCC <8>. At that time, the main elements of power were created as part of the Central People's Government: The People's Revolutionary Military Council, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Prosecutor's Office, the Administrative Council. Mao Zedong was elected head of the Central People's Government <9>. At the same time, the Central Government People's Council performed the functions of a collegial body - the head of state with the main task of preparing and convening the National Assembly of Representatives of the People, the Chinese Parliament (hereinafter - the NPC).

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<8> Truntsevsky Yu.V., Sevalnev V.V., Sukharenko A.N. Anti-corruption in China: legislation and law enforcement: Monograph. M.: Prospect, 2019. pp. 11-12.

<9> The State system of the People's Republic of China / Ed. by L.M. Gudoshnikov. M.: Gl. ed. East lit. Publishing house "Nauka" of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1988. p. 16.

 

As the revolutionary movement moved from rural to urban China in the 1950s, the following factors had a significant impact on it <10>.

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- <10> Howland D. Democratic Centrism in Revolutionary China: Tensions within a People's Democratic Dictatorship // Open Journal of Philosophy. 2017. Vol. 7. P. 448 - 466.

 

First, the mass line that worked so successfully for the communist revolution in rural areas was transformed into democratic centralism for urban areas. Like the mass line, democratic centralism proposed a dialectic between the masses and the leadership, so that the masses would contribute problems, grievances, solutions and related ideas, which the CPC leadership should process and contribute to party policy for subsequent criticism, and then create a more perfect policy based on such contributions from the masses, and the dialectic would continue to develop. In this case, democracy means the contribution of all, and centralization means the consolidation of policy by the leadership, which is emphasized by many researchers <11>.

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<11> Mao Z. On the Mass Line. In: Schram S. (Ed.). The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (Rev. and Enlarged ed.). New York: Praeger, 1969. P. 315 - 317; Selden M. The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. P. 200 - 212; Selden M. Yan'an Communism Reconsidered // Modern China. 1995. Vol. 21. P. 8 - 44; Starr J.B. Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. P. 147; Lin C. The Transformation of Chinese Socialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. P. 143; Hammond E. Marxism and the Mass Line // Modern China 1978. Vol. 4. P. 3 - 27.

 

Secondly, in the 1950s, democratic centralism spread from a party organization to a public organization. In this regard, it is worth noting that democratic centralism appeared in China thanks to the CPC in 1927 and two key Articles of the CPC (ed. July 1928 <12>, June 1945 <13>) contained provisions on the institution of democratic centralism as the basic principle of party organization.

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<12> Constitution of the Communist Party of China (1928). In: Saich T. (Ed.). The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analyses. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, 1996. P. 376 - 386.

<13> Constitution of the Communist Party of China (1945). In: Saich T. (Ed.). The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analyses. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, 1996. P. 1254 - 1267.

 

Characterizing democratic centralism, the CPC Charter (various editions) notes similar provisions:

1) party organizations are created by elections;

2) party organizations at all levels are required to submit reports to those party members or divisions by which they were elected;

3) all lower-level divisions must make decisions of higher-level divisions in order to ensure the execution of decisions without any conditions;

4) individual members must obey the party units to which they belong, the minority must obey the majority, the lower ones must obey the higher ones, all party members must obey the Central Committee of the Party. Discipline, obedience and unity were the permanent basis for party organization. Thus, the final formalization of the four generally accepted elements of democratic centralism was formalized in the CPC Charter (ed. 1945).

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<14> Liu X. Minzhujizhongzhi [Democratic Centrism]. Beijing: Jief-angjunchu-banshe, 2007. P. 290.

 

Subsequently, the institution of democratic centralism underwent significant changes in the 1950s. Party documents of that period specify that 1) each level of party leadership and elected positions is determined by the specifics of production; 2) each level of leadership and management chooses a certain time to report on their work; 3) each person follows the party organization; the minority follows the majority; lower ranks follow higher ranks; and local organizations They follow the central organization; 4) everyone must strictly follow the party organization and unconditionally carry out party decisions.

It can be concluded that the main postulate of the constitutional development of the CPC and Chinese statehood on the basis of the implementation of the principle of democratic centralism since the second half of the 20th century is the primary formation of the ideological basis for the functioning of the party in power.

New elements in the institute of democratic centralism in the 1950s were direct appeals to workers through current party documents of that time <15>, which were specifically addressed to new party members from among the representatives of the urban working class.

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<15> Shanghai Shi Dang'an guan. 1952 - 1959. A76-2-212-16. A76-2-212-17. A76-2-276-19.

 

It can be stated that the ideological platform of the CPC is based, among other things, on the principle of democratic centralism, which is aimed at the grassroots of party members, and the highest ranks of leaders should actively interact with representatives of the broad party strata of the lower level <16>.

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<16> Shanghai Shi Dang'an guan. 1952 - 1953. A76-2-212-17.

 

Taking into account these positive changes, at the suggestion of the CPC Central Committee, at the 20th meeting of the Central Government People's Council in January 1953, it was decided to prepare a draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China with the creation of a constitutional commission composed of representatives of the CPC, democratic parties and public organizations. On June 14, 1954, the Central Government People's Council published the draft Constitution of the People's Republic of China for national discussion, which took place for more than two months with the participation of 150 million citizens.

At the First Session of the National People's Congress (hereinafter - the National People's Congress), elected through multi-stage elections, held on September 15, 1954, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China was approved on September 20, 1954. 5 basic laws were also adopted, which, in development of the provisions of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, established the structure and principles of the NPC's activities; the system and functions of the State Council (an analogue of the government); the powers of local public authorities and management, court and prosecutor's offices.

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China was formed under the influence of the experience of state-building in the USSR, which determined its socialist character. Thus, the development and adoption of the first Constitution of the People's Republic of China and the basic laws for the system of state power in 1954 became possible on the basis of the created ideological base of the CPC with the implementation of the principle of democratic centralism, which predetermined the historical dependence and mandatory interaction of Chinese constitutionalism with democratic centralism. However, due to the peculiarities of the initial stage of the development of democratic centralism in the public administration system of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, there were objective problems of establishing interaction between capitalist elements and democratic ones, the growth of bureaucracy, and the conflict of vertical power with local self-government.

These problems led to the deformation of Chinese democratic centralism caused by the process of socialist transformations in the 1950s (especially in cities), with the creation of a party-state regime that controlled all aspects of society and economic life. The negative aspects of the development of the Institute of democratic centralism of the CPC in the 1960s and 1970s include the following:

1) despite the importance of providing feedback between the party and the people, since the mid-1950s, power has increasingly spread downwards, from the party in the center to the settlements, which was accompanied by a mixture of political debates with a struggle for power and the replacement of the party's mass line of interaction with mass mobilization with a loss of understanding of the needs of the people, the growth of excessive bureaucracy, the emergence of cronyism and corruption <17>;

2) the beginning of the implementation of Mao Zedong's concept of the "Chinese path to socialism", which differs from the Soviet model, including increased centralization of state power under the influence of the CPC, the beginning of collectivization in agriculture with monolithic patterns of national integration, as well as the encouragement of censorship <18>;

3) The Constitution of the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1969) became a legally insignificant document, since the revolution was directed against the upper middle class (officials, civil servants, scientists, artists) in order to "purify" the ranks of the CPC; Mao Zedong and his entourage began to use young people as assault troops to suppress oppositional forces Red Guards (Red Guards) detachments; pogroms of government bodies, party committees, and public organizations were carried out, as a result of which a significant number of employees of the CPC Central Committee, security agencies, the court, the prosecutor's office, the army, science, and the education system were killed <19>;

4) the resumption of the constitutional rule regime is connected with the illegitimate amendment of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in January 1975, within the framework of which, in particular, the ideas of the cultural revolution were consolidated in exacerbating class contradictions of society; the powers of the party leadership by the state, the organizational leadership of the CPC - NPC, the CPC central committee to form "operational bodies" for the daily work of the government, the party, the army, revolutionary committees that have become permanent bodies of local assemblies of people's representatives; The proclamation of the People's Republic of China as a socialist state with the dictatorship of the proletariat, built on two types of socialist property: public ownership of the means of production, collective ownership;

5) radical provisions of the previous Constitution were excluded from the text of the new Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1978, in particular, the norms on preparation for war were removed; priority tasks of modernization in agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology were established by attracting active members of the revolutionary united front, which should unite the working masses with the intelligentsia, democratic patriotic parties, compatriots abroad, as well as members of the international united front opposing the hegemony of superpower countries;

6) due to the incompleteness of the revision of the compromise Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1978, the following amendments of 1979, 1980 formed a new version of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China in 1982, the main provisions of which are currently in force.

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<17> Lee H.Y. From Revolutionary Cadres to Party Technocrats in Socialist China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991. P. 397.

<18> Knight N. Rethinking Mao: Explorations in Mao Zedong's Thought. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007. P. 221; Schram S. The Thought of Mao Tse-tung. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. P. 102; Davies G. Homo Dissensum Significans, or the Perils of Taking a Stand in China // Social Text. 2011. No. 109. P. 29 - 56.

<19> Documents of the first session of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China of the fifth convocation. Beijing, 1978. p. 18.

 

Thus, the periods of development of democratic centralism in the PRC's public administration system over three decades included many events, the legal consequences of which allow us to speak about their constitutional nature only within the framework of the original version of the 1954 Constitution and the 1978 version, the text of which was transformed into the modern version of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China dated March 11, 2018, while the implementation took place deformed democratic centralism within the framework of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The current stage of the application of democratic centralism in the public administration system of the People's Republic of China is most fully characterized in the report of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 19th National Congress of the CPC <20>, its main features include:

1) the content of the preamble of the report on the content and traditions of the historical mission of the CPC, which, among other things, notes the need to continue the struggle with endless energy to achieve the great goal of national revival, formulates the main achievements of the party in recent years, and also states significant results in ensuring full and strict management of the party and the system of state power on the principle of democratic centrism

2) the ideology of socialism with Chinese specifics at a new stage and the main policies of the party and the state related to it;

3) implementation of a new development concept with the formation of a modern economic system;

4) improvement of the system of people's responsibility, development of socialist democratic policy;

5) promotion of the legal management system;

6) the continuation of the development of a socialist culture of prosperity in the country;

7) improving the safety and living standards of people, strengthening innovation management.

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<20> Full text of Xi Jinping's report at 19th CPC National Congress.

 

Thus, the newest historical stage of democratic centralism in the public administration system of the People's Republic of China is determined by a variety of directions and specific measures for the development of this party principle, including with the aim of improving the system of state power and the legal system in the People's Republic of China.