The Construction Of The New Chinese Government System And The Soviet Factor (1949-1954)

China’s political system is based on three factors, including China’s imperialist tradition and structural legacy, the Marxist political system and its application in China, and the institutional experience of the Soviet Union. It can be considered as the product of the interaction between its traditional custom and the influence of the Soviet Union. To be more specific, based on their clear understanding of Marxism as well as national independence, China’s revolutionary leaders with Mao as their representative, reconciling leader authority and personal preference, created a brand new socialist political system through system reduplication and innovation.After detailed literature analysis and careful comparisons of the histories of Chinese and Soviet political systems, the dissertation discusses the historical root of China’s early political system and the in-depth reasons for its later evolution, with a focus on the effect of the Soviet Union. China was largely influenced by the Soviet Union in that the bipartite relation between CCP and Soviet Communist Party had a great effect on the early revolutionary activities of CCP and the formation of China’s political system. The influence of the Soviet Union on the process of the establishment of the PRC is virtually about the selection of the political system. China’s one-sided coalition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War owed to the special bipartite relation and the high agreement of the ideology.After clarifying the Soviet influence on the China’s political system establishment, the dissertation makes further discussion from three aspects. Firstly, the Soviet influence on the establishment of the central government. The Central People’s Government-Council system formulated in the Common Programmed later caused power divisions. As a result, while building the planned economic system as the Soviet Union did, the CCP strengthened the concentration of State power and Party power through two rounds of institutional restructurings, leading to high hymnology of the two nations’political systems. With the Soviet influence, China has formed a highly concentrated political institutional system. Secondly, the Soviet influence on the local governmental structures. The evolution of the great administrative region (GAR) reflects the reduplication of the Stalinist power concentration at the central government level, and as a result of the influence, the CCP has given political factors priority when dealing with the state-local government relation. Thirdly, the Soviet influence on the evolution of China’s governmental institution. The Constitution of1954was virtually drafted under the suggestions of Stalin. Under this Constitution, a new government organization was established, characterized by the set up of the NPC, the State Council and the Presidency. It bears both similarities with the Soviet system and uniqueness of Chinese system, reflecting CCP’s real political need as well as certain degree of reduplication of the Soviet political system.The dissertation also makes reflections at the theoretical level from the following aspects. The Soviet ideology, institution and some decisive Soviets had joint influences on the establishment of China’s political system. Specifically, the Stalinism has greatly influenced China’s selection of the political system. The concentration of central political powers went through China’s political institutional evolution and has strengthened the state power and the Party power. China’s political system reveals that the selection of a state’s governmental system is the historical result of both internal and external factors. The tension between reduplication and innovation is the political logic of the establishment of China’s political system. Up till now, China is still exploring and improving its Socialist system and the corresponding institutional patterns. However, due to the in-depth Soviet influence and the reliance on the traditional imperialism, the centralization of central government powers and the partism since1949has not been fundamentally changed, which is largely the cutthroat of China’s further political reform and modernization. With the deepening of the market economic system, China is now following a de-Soviet-influence pattern, and gradually dissolving the still present Soviet planned economic system, yet it is concerned with not only the institution itself, but the ideology and value concept behind it as well.