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".
Primary stage of socialism
While the CPC pursued non-orthodox economic policies, it believed the party would be able to safeguard China's goal of socialist development by transforming Marxism into a dominant value system. This was reflected by the introduction of the term "socialist spiritual civilization", a concept introduced in 1981 and mentioned in the Political Report to the 13th National Congress. The main function of socialist spiritual civilization was to check against the dangers of ideological retreat in the party's effort to progress toward socialism. A CPC resolution in 1986 said, "we will be not able to guarantee the socialist direction of our modernization course, and our socialist society will lose its goals and ideals" if the party stopped upholding Marxist doctrine. However, because the material base, officially referred to as material civilization, created by the economic reforms did not conform with Marxist analysis of socialism, the CPC concluded that in the new era Marxism would be given the role as the dominant value system, which entailed that other value systems could be accepted but these systems could not negate Marxism.