Talk:Politics of China

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2021 and 14 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Serinali. Peer reviewers: Varshanekkanti, Marisa Balades.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Oddly-written intro, potential bias?
The last few paragraph's of the article's intro (beginning with "China practices a form of democracy that it calls socialist consultative democracy.") are written strangely. That paragraph in particular keeps repeating itself. The rest of the intro is oddly pro-Chinese, talking about the merits of "consultative democracy" and rebutting the notion that China isn't democratic.

I definitively second this notion. This opening seciton reads, borderline, like propaganda. Kyle C. 70.169.248.254 (talk) 20:51, 21 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Im finding that often on Chinese articles, in a sense. Its becoming hard to find actual criticism of the CCP, when there is in fact plenty to be had. This should be corrected for the affect of balance, as it can be stated that the CCP has done much good, but also a lot of bad. And its becoming harder for some reason to find any of the bad in these articles... So, yes. I agree. There seems to be some bias here.. SageSolomon (talk) 03:37, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I also second this. Some lines, like ''However, elections are also an element in socialist consultative democracy, even though the People's Republic of China is often erroneously criticized in the West for not having elections. This error likely stems from a misunderstanding of the PRC's election system.'' sound oddly condescending, and most of the sources are from sources like The China Daily, which is owned by the CCP. I have nor time neither the experience to clean up the article, nor do I want to engage in drive by tagging, but this seems like an candidate for Template:POV. Tijmen Wil (talk) 20:20, 21 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and marked some sources as unreliable, hope this doesn't go to far, and I apologize if this is tag-bombing, I really don't have the expertise to actually fix most of the articles issues. Tijmen Wil (talk) 18:58, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm creating a couple of sections of specific points to link to in templates. Tijmen Wil (talk) 13:25, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I straightened out the section's language to make clear what was opinion. It's still not an adequate account, but what's there is NPOV. I removed the "better source" tags and made clear that these official sources are good for stating official views. ch (talk) 19:44, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Why are Chinese sources considered unreliable but not something like Freedom House, which is still cited in the article. And how is this more biased than the sentence directly before the Freedom House citation flatly defining the Chinese political system as "authoritarian"? FlamesThePhoenix (talk) 17:48, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedians... it should not be surprising to you that Wikipedia, as the single most popular English-language site for reading about anything, including China, might be monitored and edited by folks with a pro-China stance. I assume nearly everything in all China-related articles is either written directly by or at a minimum, reviewed and edited by someone in PRC. You can tell by the tone, word choice, poor translations, and of course, the pro-China, at worst "nuetral," never negative, bias in articles. I think the neutral bias is fine - I'd rather the articles be present, and let the reader be aware that they are reading something that is being presented by a Chinese author, with their bias. Bryanfw (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:59, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

1992 consensus
"In addition, the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) share the 1992 Consensus that there is only "One China"; thus, each claims sovereignty over the entire territory of the other."

The linked Wikipedia article disputes the fact that the consensus is generally accepted, citing the Taiwan consensus.

Tijmen Wil (talk) 13:25, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Actually that is the reason why the government has such high trust from its citizens. According to research done by The Diplomat -

Indeed, one of the less noticed political realities in China is government responsiveness to public demand.

At first glance, it is counter-intuitive that an authoritarian government needs to respond to public opinion, since authoritarian leaders do not have to face any meaningful elections at the national level. However, our research demonstrates that an absence of meaningful national elections does not indicate an absence of public political demand. While it is true that, on average, satisfaction with the national government is high, it is by no means perfect, or monolithic. In fact, about 65 percent of the public in China reports at least some degree of dissatisfaction with the central government. This dissatisfaction appears to be “listened to” by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which claims to represent the interests of “most” Chinese people.

Lacking elections as an effective yardstick to measure such representativeness, the CCP is paranoid about every single protestor on the street. While resorting to coercive methods whenever necessary, it also feels compelled to respond to public demand when possible. Thus, while media control, economic performance and cultural tradition are not entirely irrelevant, they are a relatively small part of the explanation for why political trust is so high in China. In fact, our ongoing analysis of more recent public opinion survey data suggests that such responsiveness accounts for more than 50 percent of the variation in political trust. In other words, government responsiveness is by far the most important reason for the high level of political trust in China. https://thediplomat.com/2013/06/government-for-the-people-in-china/

WesternChristianitytestballi (talk) 19:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

is China semi-presidential?
The role of president has very little de facto power. (but de Jura has power due to generally also being general secretary of communist party) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LordWikiMaster (talk • contribs) 19:43, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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Uyghur genocide has an RFC
Uyghur genocide has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:China which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 09:17, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

New Section on Civil Society, possible individual page for Civil Society in China?
Civil society is something that has yet to be touch upon on this page. I added a new section but will need lots of help on developing it further. Maybe it should even have its own Wikipedia page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Serinali (talk • contribs) 01:17, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

General sources
I have no particular problem with this article, but I worry as I read it that there are many very bold and quite important claims that the average reader might take as stone-cold fact which are not backed up by any actual source. This starts within the first few sentences of the article and continues through to the final word. Just by way of example, under the subsection "Government", the article claims "the chief executive is typically a member of the local ethnic group while the party general secretary is non-local and usually Han Chinese." This may well be correct, but it requires a direct and reliable source - if such a source cannot be located and verified, the offending sentence should be deleted. This is consistent with website-wide Wikipedia guidelines. There are many very important claims made by contributors to this page which have no sources whatsoever, beyond just this one example. And again, I am *not* saying that these are incorrect - but they need to be backed up by sources. "Common sense" or "what I read in the paper at some point" are not sources, and cannot back up claims like this. Stricter moderation of claims and sources is required here. This article needs a thorough comb run through it in order to verify many claims here because, again, 'common sense' or 'what everyone knows' are not valid bases for a platform like this. (KronosAlight (talk) 04:10, 5 June 2021 (UTC))

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So many things are wrong
Seems like the editors don't really do their homework and relying on shallow stereotypes. Like ie - China does have elections on a local level where people can vote for their local reps. Also it's not one party system. They technically have more than one political party in government albeit the dominant party is by far the strongest. WesternChristianitytestballi (talk) 19:25, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Its not just the strongest, it appoints the leadership of the other parties and controls them entirely... So yes, a one party system. Horse Eye&#39;s Back (talk) 15:45, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Also just FYI you added a source article entitled "What America's flawed democracy could learn from China's one-party rule" with the edit summary "Added more top sources" so it seems that not even you believe your own horseshit... Horse Eye&#39;s Back (talk) 15:48, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Freedom House is a biased source
At least one line in this article (alleging vast human rights abuses on the part of China) cites Freedom House as its only source. Freedom House is a source that even this very wiki states is known to be state-funded and to declare the fake elections of right wing dictatorships to be "free and fair". There's no way that Chinese sources can be deleted and called biased while this is allowed to remain. FlamesThePhoenix (talk) 17:54, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

Rory Truex's book is being misrepresented
If you read the source, Rory Truex's book's thesis is to argue against the idea that China's government is not representative. Instead, in the quote I provided, he provides his central thesis of his book, which is that China (and other governments he classifies as "authoritarian") are in fact representative of their people to some extent. Yet, the quote (which I couldn't find in his book btw) is being used to present the opposite view, that China's government is not representative of its people. This is a misrepresentation of his work, and is not the central thesis of his book. As I pointed out, on page 13 is where he presents his thesis for his book, which is the part of the book I quoted. I'm not sure how it's "more relevant" to use an out of context line of his work to make the opposite point of the central thesis of his book. I don't know when or how it was decided that he should be given a mention in the lead of the article, but it's wrong to misrepresent his work to suggest the opposite of what his book is about. Either the book being referenced should be taken for what it argues, or it shouldn't be in the lead at all. But the current situation where a quote (that I haven't yet verified is even in this work being cited) is being used out of context to suggest the opposite of the author's main thesis. JasonMacker (talk) 05:43, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

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Near-total lack of realpolitik in the article?
The main internal force shaping Chinese politics seem to be the clashes between Xi's faction (the Tsinghua clique) and Jiang's faction (the Shanghai clique), and to a lesser extent other group memberships: Tuanpai, princelings, etc. Generations of Chinese leadership is closely related. Has this information been moved to a subsidiary article, or is there some other reason it has been omitted?

This would be like US politics failing to mention the Republican and Democratic parties.

- CRGreathouse (t | c) 18:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
 * , you make a good point. There's nothing of substance on factionalism in this article or in Chinese Communist Party, so that's clearly a gap that needs filling. There's a template for CCP factions but there is not a stand-alone article about the topic. may also find this of interest. Amigao (talk) 04:24, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for tagging me Amigao. I began adding information about the factions, will continue to add later. The main problem with writing about the factions is that due to the extreme lack of information on what is going on inside the Zhongnanhai, the observations about the factions are generally very conflicting and contradictory (i.e., one news will say this official is part of this faction, but another report will disagree). Additionally, it's harder to get reporting of factions under the Xi era due to his consolidation of power, and removal of the old factions, leading observers to focus more on Xi and less on other officials. The Account 2 (talk) 08:09, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Proposal For a Page Rework
This page is filled with bias, as well as not being clear in specifying the state of the internal politics of China. In the introduction, there is a clear focus on semantic issues, using the official one party state denomination as a clear demonstration of the authoritarian nature of their government, even though factionalism is deeply rooted in the party's system.

Although it is stated that the communist party is rooted in many of the country's institutions, this is never clarified with specifics, resorting to low quality reference bombing as a way of creating the illusion of thoroughly researched statements. China is a deeply bureaucratic state, and I believe an article about Chinese politics cannot attempt to separate itself either from internal factionalism or the bureaucratic hierarchy installed within.

There are many times chinese elections are discredited, giving way to a tyrannical view of the government, even though this is a much more complicated issue. It should be expected of an article all about chinese politics to actually explore the nuances of their electoral system, and how it plays into the wider bureaucracy, instead of focusing on social policies, which don't have as big of an impact on internal/external politics as the base system in itself.

Here is an example of a few interesting topics, and how they would apply to an article about the USA. How is the power balance between the three powers? In the US, the judicial has a slight advantage, due to a more broad constitution and their permanent titles. How do administrative regions work? The USA is divided into 50 states, each with their own executive, judicial and legislative administrations. How do elections work? In the USA, elections can be direct or indirect, with elections only for the legislative and executive branches, with judicial roles being appointed. What are the political factions in the USA? The factions are generally divided between liberals and conservatives, with a focus on social policies, the liberals are generally regarded as more progressive socially, and being found mostly on the democratic party, with the republicans representing the conservatives (this section could go even further on factionalism).

In an attempt to fearmonger, all profound analysis of real politics inside of china have been thrown to the sidelines, and Although I myself am not unbiased, I believe in Wikipedia's mission of neutrality, and this is a clear example of a violation of this. I wish for this talk page to be a place to discuss a more fundamental change in this and other articles, establishing some sort of standard for "politics of x" articles Nknka (talk) 04:25, 20 November 2023 (UTC)


 * @Nknka I just happened to read this article and came to the Talk page immediately after with the same concerns you laid out. The tone of this article as written is not Wikipedia's neutral voice. I don't know enough to help rework it, but I support doing so SmoothAmber (talk) 12:04, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with the overall sentiment. I favor a 'Politics of X' approach that focuses on concrete discussion of government mechanisms, political institutions, and other structures. I favor an approach that is more focused on 'nuts and bolts' and less focused on characterizations, which are a perennial source of disagreements.
 * I do not know how much specific feedback you will get on this Talk page. It is probably best to begin making some edits to make some of these suggestions more concrete. JArthur1984 (talk) 17:13, 24 November 2023 (UTC)