Delegates

The ongoing 18th CCP Congress gathered more than 2,000 CCP delegates across China, who will vote for the leading group in China for the next decade. The CCP members count for 5% of the Chinese population, but the 2,000 CCP delegates are to decide the future of 1.4 billion people. These delegates go to Beijing every five years, dawdling for a week at the cost of tax payers' money, doing anything but their job. In the end, a few old people make final choices, and these delegates act as rubber stamps and hooray their decisions.

In theory, these delegates represent all the 80 million CCP members and are entitled with the power to determine the next leading group of China. But we all know they're hand picked. In general, the CCP delegates are considered as "elites", including CEO of state-owned companies, presidents of academic institutions or high-level government officials. They go to Beijing, fully informed of how little they can affect the conference outcome, but always enjoy this great networking opportunity which can build up their "guanxi" with the central committee. Not surprisingly, some recent released stories show that these delegates care little about policy, but are more keen to show their loyalty to the Party. Instead of making comments on Hu's 100-min speech or the Party's Constitution Amendment, delegates from Ningxia Province talked about how frequently they were thrilled into crying during the congress when they found the Party is "so clean and pure"; and another old delegate proudly told the journalist that she supported the CCP's policy by never voting against it - as most other delegates did in the past half a century.


To many people's surprise, even these rubber stamps are carefully selected. I worked for a small non-communist party before, and never had the opportunity of getting involved into CCP's issues. But I once worked with some colleagues to interview National People's Congress (NPC) delegates, who by law are the counterparts to the US Congressmen, but are powerless in China. Just like their peers in CCP, the NPC delegates meet every five years to elect the national leaders, which of course are determined by the same group of old guys. But to guarantee the NPC delegates will "behave well" and pass every personnel decision, bill or amendment, it's vital for the central government to screen all the NPC candidates and make sure invitation only goes to those they like. To demonstrate the participation of non-communist parties in state affairs, non-CCP members are always invited to help select NPC delegates. I once worked as the representative of my party in the selection committee, and interviewed 20 candidates. I followed the selection criteria, talking not only to the candidate, but also his colleagues and supervisors - a typical way of collecting comprehensive information about a candidate in the CCP. After quite intense interview, my group reported our final recommendations, which were presented to NPC central committee for their final decisions. Usually 92% of the recommended candidates will get a one-week vacation and a free trip to Beijing.

My friends at Princeton can be very excited at meeting or working with a Congressmen/Senator, while I find it ridiculous that I actually did interview some "Congressmen" in my country, which unfortunately shows how powerless the NPC is in China. No one can confidently say what policy will be like in China in the next decade, and all we know so far is that Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will announce themselves the next CCP President and vice-president in four days, Bo Xilai and his allies won't have any chance in the game, and tax payers will continue paying the bill.