Abstract

This chapter focuses on a speech by Xi Jinping from late 2021, concerning “whole process people’s democracy.” After a brief historical overview of democratic development in the New China, the speech’s main concern is with the time from CPC’s Eighteenth National Congress in 2012 and then the tasks at hand today. There are three main emphases. First is the importance of the mass line as the foundation of people’s democracy, along with explicating the meaning of the “people’s heart” or will in a socialist context and the role of democratic supervision. The second concerns a signature emphasis of Xi Jinping’s tenure as general secretary: developing further a comprehensive rule of law. I provide a brief background to socialist rule of law, before dealing with the project of strengthening the constitution and the need for a robust and constantly updated legal system that focuses on incorporating the virtuous or “good laws [善法 shanfa]” that are necessary for a socialist legal system. Third is the leadership of the Communist Party, without which socialist democracy would not exist. Here I focus on the development of rule-of-law “statutory procedures” through which the Party’s proposals become the will of the people, and how democratic centralism has become a feature of country-wide governance. The conclusion to the chapter seeks to define socialist democracy in light of these three topics as a dialectical conjunction of Communist Party leadership and the people as masters of the country, mediated through the full range or “whole process” of democratic and rule-of-law statutory procedures.