Taking Consultation in China Seriously: The People’s Political Consultative Conferences

This article was originally published with the SOAS China Institute and is republished here with the permission of the author. The article is a part of an ongoing collaboration between the SOAS China Institute and CHOICE.

Although the annually held ‘Two Sessions’ attract significant attention both domestically and abroad, typically only proceedings from the National People’s Congress (NPC) are reported on. This is due to the belief that the second institution – the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) – is merely a rubber-stamp institution, even more so than the NPC. However, studying the CPPCC and its counterparts at the provincial and local levels allows us to learn new lessons about Chinese politics.

The People’s Political Consultative Conferences (PPCCs) on all administrative levels are consultative institutions, meaning that delegates put forward suggestions on issues that they think government departments should address. While the government is obligated to officially respond to these proposals, it is not required to implement any of them. Without the ability to make binding decisions, these institutions are often dismissed as echo chambers that merely propose ideas already decided on by the party leadership. Coupled with the fact that the delegates are prohibited from addressing politically sensitive issues, these institutions are largely seen as toothless. Even worse, in the past, several individual delegates have been ridiculed for making rather embarrassing suggestions in their official capacity or failing to attend required meetings.

Yet, studying the provincial-level PPCCs over the past few years has provided me with important insight about the delegates and their behavior, which may compel a revision of the widely held assumptions about these institutions. The PPCCs are among the most inclusive political institutions in China, with government officials, academics, and private entrepreneurs constituting slightly more than 70 percent of all delegates. Around 60 percent of delegates are not CCP members, and, in recent years, the number of proposals submitted has skyrocketed, making the institutions worth studying in greater detail.

In my previous research, I found that certain groups of delegates are significantly more active than others. Local government officials, academics and professionals tend to be among the most proactive in putting forward a variety of suggestions. In other words, it is especially those who lack other formal channels to make their interests and preferences known to the government. The content of their proposals supports this view. Cadres working at lower administrative levels often channel local knowledge and demands into the official processes, while academics bring their research findings and academic expertise into the policy-making arena.

This knowledge can be incredibly useful for governments, which has prompted all administrative levels across China to work on professionalizing the PPCCs. Delegates have been instructed to submit fewer proposals but improve their quality. In response, many of the proposals submitted today can be remarkably informative, often based on surveys and studies conducted by the delegates themselves. In addition, the satisfaction of delegates with government officials in implementing their suggestions has become an indicator of their performance evaluations, incentivizing them to take the proposals seriously.

This has motivated me to study in greater detail how the government and its various departments respond to proposals submitted through the PPCCs. In recent work, I analyzed the government’s responses to over 9,000 policy suggestions submitted to Hainan’s Provincial People’s Consultative Conference. The findings underscore the professionalization of the institution and highlight the importance of expertise. The government responds more positively – i.e., by signaling its commitment to implement the delegates’ suggestions and assuring more frequent implementation – to proposals that demonstrate familiarity with the legal framework, provide evidence and display greater complexity. In other words, proposals that tend to be of higher quality are also more likely to be implemented, which is particularly true for those sent to government departments that are more technical in nature.

While it matters what is being suggested and backed up with evidence, it seems to matter less who is submitting these suggestions. Government officials do not systematically receive more positive responses than other occupational groups, neither do party members nor those considered more elitist within the respective occupations. The only group systematically favored by the government is the institutional leadership of the PPCC, including the Chair, Vice-Chair, General Secretary, and the Standing Committee.

These findings show that studying the interactions between governments and delegates in the PPCCs can be a worthwhile endeavor for researchers. First, the proposals provide a useful way to gauge the concerns and preferences of societal elites. Although the proposals serve as ‘representation within bounds,’ they still address a broad range of issues and reveal policy priorities among different actors. Second, they also uncover which elites use this channel in the first place to appeal to the government. A widely-held belief, for instance, is that private entrepreneurs are particularly active in trying to lobby governments through the PPCCs. This is not supported by my research, however, as they tend to submit relatively few proposals.

Third, taking responses to proposals seriously is worthwhile, as it sheds light on the government’s priorities and even those of its various departments. A broader question related to this is whether the information the Chinese government and its different components collect is valuable to the regime. My research suggests that, with some effort, the PPCCs have been professionalized and, as a result, the information collected through them has also gained more value. All this points to the need to study these institutions in greater depth and not to dismiss them too quickly due to their non-binding character.