Politics of China
China practices a form of democracy that it calls socialist consultative democracy. Socialist Consultative Democracy is the form of democracy that exists in the People's Republic of China, though at least one source says that this form of democracy was created by the Communist Party of China. According to an article on Qiushi Journal, "Consultative democracy was created by the CPC and the Chinese people as a form of socialist democracy. In this sense, consultative democracy represents the grand product of our efforts to enrich and develop Marxist theories on democracy. Socialist consultative democracy exhibits distinctive features as well as unique advantages. Not only representing a commitment to socialism, it carries forward China’s fine political and cultural traditions. Not only representing a commitment to the organizational principles and leadership mode of democratic centralism, it also affirms the role of the general public in democracy. Not only representing a commitment to the leadership of the CPC, it also gives play to the role of all political parties and organizations as well as people of all ethnic groups and all sectors of society".
Ideology of the Communist Party of China
The concept of a primary stage of socialism was developed mainly by Xue Muqiao and Su Shaozi. The concept began to evolve when the new post-Mao leadership of Deng began questioning Mao' assertion that "class struggle as the key link". Su, coauthoring with Feng Langrui, published an article in "Economic Research" () in 1979 which called into question the Chinese socialist project by using Marxist methodology. The article analyzed the basis of Chinese socialism by looking at Karl Marx's writings; Marx drew a distinction between lower-stage communism (commonly referred to as the socialist mode of production) and higher-phase communism (often referred to as simply communism). Su's and Feng's article created three subdivisions within the socialist mode of production; the first phase was the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production; which was (a) the phase in which the proletariat seized power and set-up the dictatorship of the proletariat and (b) in which undeveloped socialism was created, the second phase was advanced socialism (the socialism of which Marx wrote about). They argued that China was an undeveloped socialist nation since;