13. Strengthening the People's Congress Is the Fundamental Way to Develop Socialist Democracy

Abstract

… The key of democratic construction is to solve the problem of overcentralized power, which leads to personal arbitrary action, dictatorship, and makes a democratic system nothing but a form. How can we resolve or decentralize the overcentralized power? The main way is through division of power. There are two ways to do this job: one is to divide the power in a vertical direction; the other is to divide the power in a horizontal direction. In reforms of the economic system, we are emphasizing the former method. In reforms of the political system, we are now working on, or will begin to work on, mainly the latter. It has been proven that dividing power horizontally is more difficult than dividing power vertically. The difficult process of implementing the factory manager responsibility system in companies is a good example. Both the separation of responsibilities of party and manager in a factory and the separation of government and commune management in a rural area are part of the process of dividing power. These results in the reform of the political system are brought about because of reforms in the economic system. …