People's Republic of China

Introduction

The policy of the Republic of China is based on a power structure that comprises three key areas: the party and subordinate to it, the army and state. The head of state is for the President of the Republic of China as the leader of the party is its general secretary and leader of the army is the president of the Central Military Commission. Today, these three positions are occupied by one man, Hu Jintao, as had happened to his predecessor Jiang Zemin. This tendency to appoint one person to the three charges is to avoid the power struggles that the tripartite structure has caused in the past. In fact, one of the power struggles most dramatic in the history of the Republic came in the 1960'swhen Mao Zedong, leader of the party of power shifted to the head of state Liu Shaoqi, which would leave the seat vacant President of the Republic until the year 1980.

The Communist Party of China

The Communist Party of China, founded to support Soviet in 1921, is one of the largest political organizations in the world and currently has more than 71 million members. The party has a presence in all areas of life China, controlling the different levels of government and the workplace and educational institutions. The economic opening of the last three decades has altered, however, the ideological basis of the party, which has been moving away from traditional communist ideas represented by the thought of Mao Zedong and assuming as valid the economic model capitalist. The party's ideology has resulted in this regard to an authoritarian model with a strong nationalist. Thus, the party has become a kind of bureaucratic state apparatus, which guarantees the maintenance of authoritarian rule (Warren, 52).

The People's Liberation Army

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was originally the army of the Communist Party, which led this party to victory in the Civil War against the Kuomintang. Founded on August 1 of 1927 as "Red Army", adopted its current name in June 1946. Since the proclamation of the Republic, has remained essentially subordinate to the party rather than the state government. At the head of the army is the Central Military Commission, whose president is Hu Jintao today. Although technically there are two central military commissions, one from the other Party and State, both have exactly the same members so that in practice it is a single institution. Unlike what happens in almost every country in the world, in the Republic of China Ministry of Defence has no authority over the army and its scope is limited to military relations with the outside.

The PLA is the largest army in the world in number of troops, with more than two and a half million soldiers, and since the year 1980, participates in economic activities in order to finance itself without depending on the state. These economic activities include the sale of military technology to other countries and non-military areas. Precisely the extent of the economic activities of the army ...