One Too Many? Chinese Perspectives on Multiparty Politics

Abstract This chapter argues that the conventional portrayal of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a textbook single-party state obscures the historical and functional significance of the eight “democratic parties and groups” (DPGs) that have operated alongside the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the founding of the PRC in 1949. By tracing the intellectual roots of Chinese conceptions of democracy and political representation through the first half of the twentieth century, the chapter highlights how Chinese elites developed a paradoxical vision of party politics that valued party pluralism but rejected adversarial party competition as harmful to national unity. The author proposes that China's political system is better understood through Sartori’s “hegemonic party formula” by showing how the CCP positioned itself as a “ruling party” ( zhizhengdang ) while relegating the DPGs to “participating parties” ( canzhengdang ) within a simulated pluralist framework. It reveals that the CCP’s “multi-party cooperation” was a strategic, ideologically framed mechanism that reconciled preexisting democratic discourses with the CCP’s drive for centralized authority.