AP® Comparative Government and Politics · Unit 2 · Topic 2.3
China's President, Premier, and Party General Secretary
China has three parallel chains of command: party, state, and military, each with its own top title. One person holds all three top titles at once, which is what actually concentrates power, since the party outranks the state and the premier only runs administration under the party leader.
China runs three separate hierarchies at the same time. The Communist Party has its own ladder topped by the general secretary. The state has its own ladder topped by the president, with the premier running the cabinet and bureaucracy underneath. The military has its own ladder topped by the chairman of the Central Military Commission. On paper these are three distinct structures with three distinct top jobs. In practice, one person has held all three top titles since the 1990s: general secretary, president, and CMC chairman.
Holding all three titles matters because it closes off any gap where a rival could build an independent power base. If the party leader and the military chief were different people, the military chief could act as a check, or even a threat. Stacking the jobs means whoever leads the party also commands the guns and sits as head of state, so no competing center of power can form around a different title. The party sits above the state in this system, and real authority runs through the Politburo Standing Committee, a small body of around seven people chaired by the general secretary, which makes the decisions the state apparatus then carries out.
This is why the premier is not a Western-style prime minister. A Western prime minister typically leads the most powerful branch of government. China's premier manages the day-to-day work of ministries and the economy, but answers upward to the general secretary and the Standing Committee, not the other way around. Placed next to presidential and parliamentary systems studied elsewhere in this unit, China shows what happens when a single party hierarchy is layered on top of, and in control of, the formal state wiring diagram.
Key terms
- General Secretary
- The top leader of the Chinese Communist Party, the position from which real authority flows.
- Premier
- The head of the State Council who manages government ministries and administration under the party leader's direction.
- Politburo Standing Committee
- A small group of roughly seven top party leaders, chaired by the general secretary, that makes the party's key decisions.
- Central Military Commission (CMC)
- The body that commands China's armed forces, chaired by the same person who leads the party.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do the party, the state, and the military stack into three parallel chains of command?
- Worked exampleShow me which of China's three top jobs actually carries the power to decide things.
- How it worksWalk me through how the Politburo Standing Committee sits above the formal government.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't China's premier the equivalent of a Western prime minister?
Check yourself
End of topic.