Governance Edging out Representation?

Based on examining the historical documents at different junctures as well as findings through field trips, this paper aims to examine the causes and repercussions of the imbalanced functions of the People’s Congress System. By proposing a monitoring & adaptation model, this paper reexamines the interactions between the People’s Congresses and the ruling party from a historical perspective, arguing that the imbalanced functions of the People’s Congress System result from the interactions between the Party’s monitoring efforts and the corresponding adaptations of the People’s Congresses. On the one hand, to improve the institutional performance of the whole system, the ruling party introduced an array of institutional arrangements to see to it that the People’s Congresses would fulfill specific governance tasks assigned to them. On the other hand, the People’s Congresses have gained a measure of autonomy thanks to their organizational growth and institutionalization, changes in the makeup of their deputies and efforts by certain leaders since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Although they are expected to take on the governance functions assigned to them by the ruling party, the People’s Congresses enjoy greater leeway to carry out their functions selectively with an eye to improve their standing and relevance in China’s political system. The paper argues that both the ruling party and the People’s Congresses played their role in actualizing the imbalanced functions of the People’s Congress System. Ironically, the fact that the People’s Congresses prioritize their governance functions and the overall performance of the party-state system gets consistent improvement may have warded off potential representation crisis engendered by the low representativeness of the People’s Congress System.