A Study On The Practical Dilemma Of The Permanent System Of The Party Congress

Inner-party democracy is the life of the Communist Party of China. This scientific conclusion drew by the 16 th CPC National Congress is based on historical experiences of the Party, and is a penetrating summary that best illustrates the high significance of inner-party democracy. The Party has been making various attempts in promoting inner-party democracy, one of which is to adopt a permanent system of the CPC party congress. Initially the permanent system meant to increase activities of party representatives so as to improve the democratization level inside the Party. However, the attempt was interrupted by domestic political situations only after two years’ of practice. In 1980 s, the Party restarted regional pilot investigations to experiment with the permanent system, and had expanded the trail scope and gained positive results after the 16 th CPC National Congress. As a result, it is fair to say that the significance of permanent system of the party congress lies in the importance of inner-party democracy. Unfortunately, the attempt is still limited to the local pilot stage 60 years after its first introduction and almost 30 years after the pilot programs were started. Now even the local pilot practices aren bristled with difficulties. The awkward situation raises the question that what is the major bottleneck hindering the implementation of such an important inner-party democracy measure? The thesis will explain the dilemma that the permanent system of the party congress encounters by analyzing the essentialness of the system to inner-party democracy, history review, sorting out the problems and proposing solutions.The thesis is composed of the six parts as followed:The introduction chapter briefly describes the raise of the issue, the current state of research, methodology, research approaches, innovations and challenges.Chapter one states the significance of adopting a permanent system to the inner-party democracy, that is, the former serves as an important means for the latter to develop. Only when the permanent system of party congress is viewed under the context of inner-party democracy, can we grasp the urgency and necessity of adopting the permanent system of party congress and strengthen our confidence to promote it.Chapter two explains the practice value of the permanent system of party congress on the basis of solid historical ground. Given the grim situation of the revolution, CPC gave up regular party congresses after the 6th National Congress, since when the activities of party representatives were absent too. To improve inner-party democracy, after the CPC became the ruling party, it put forward the permanent system of party congress on the 8th National Congress. Unfortunately, the practices only lasted for two years before it was aborted. After reform and opening-up, there was a strong outcry for re-adopting the permanent system of party congress, so some pilot programs were launched in 1988, but the result was far from satisfactory. The 16 th party congress stated that “inner-party democracy is the party’s life”, after this, activities to explore inner-party democracy were in full swing, during which came the third climax of pilot programs on the permanent system of party congress, and some of the pilot programs achieves fairly good results. The historical process- from the first attempt for a permanent system to the interrupt and the revert, demonstrates that the system has tenacious vitality and high practical value.Chapter three outlines the existing problems that the permanent system is struggling with. The author argues that the implementation of the permanent system of party congress faces problems of four aspects. First, lack of consensus on implementation is the root for many existing problems. Second, tenure issues could infect the whole system on issues such as representatives’ election, activity and management. Third, the annual meeting system of party congress could cause a string of confusions such as the positions of party representatives, legal issues, confusing relations between the party congress and the peoples’ congress, and between the party congress and the political consultative conferences, and some practical problems such as the congress duration and budget issues. Fourth, standing body could be another problem. In some local pilot systems, a standing body was believed to be unnecessary, while others had set up some contact offices for party representatives, which are different settings to a standing committee. These problems are interrelated and entwined when they are included within the larger system of a permanent congress system. It is safe to say that, among these problems, “one problem is related to another, and another problem may contain a third problem”, which gives us a glance of the reasons behind the unsatisfactory implementation of the permanent system and the current dilemma.Chapter Four will propose some solutions to break through the dilemma. The principle philosophy to deal with these correlated problems is to stress the key points and make overall improvements. To stress the key points means that we should focus on the most critical problem- consensus building- through various measures such as strengthening publicity, clarifying opinions of the central committee, and perfecting the election system. Overall improvements, on the other hands, refer to the specific arrangements appear in each link of the permanent system. At the macro level, the tenure system, annual meeting system and standing body should be pushed forward cooperatively. On a micro level, each link should be designed in coordination with other arrangements. Only with the whole system’s coordination will the permanent system work effectively and avoid failure of the reform caused by institutional fragmentation.The conclusion restates the significance of permanent congress system to inner-party democracy: a permanent system is not only an important path but also a guaranty for the effective functioning of inner-party democracy in the long run. And the role of the central party committee is stressed again in promoting the operation of such as system.