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
Karl Marx argued that society went through different stages of development, and believed that the capitalist mode of production was the third stage. The stages were: ancient, based mostly on slavery; feudal; capitalist; socialist; and the communist mode of production. The attainment of true "communism" is described as the CCP's and China's "ultimate goal". While the CCP claims that China is in the primary stage of socialism, party theorists argue that the current development stage "looks a lot like capitalism". Alternately, certain party theorists argue that "capitalism is the early or first stage of communism." In official pronouncements, the primary stage of socialism is predicted to last about 100 years, after which China will reach another developmental stage. Some have dismissed the concept of a primary stage of socialism as intellectual cynicism. According to Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a China analyst, "When I first heard this rationale, I thought it more comic than clever—a wry caricature of hack propagandists leaked by intellectual cynics. But the 100-year horizon comes from serious political theorists".