China
China's constitution states that The People's Republic of China "is a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants," and that the state organs "apply the principle of democratic centralism." The PRC is one of the world's only socialist states openly endorsing communism (see Ideology of the Communist Party of China). The Chinese government has been variously described as communist and socialist, but also as authoritarian and corporatist, with heavy restrictions in many areas, most notably against free access to the Internet, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to have children, free formation of social organizations and freedom of religion. Its current political, ideological and economic system has been termed by its leaders as the "people's democratic dictatorship", "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (which is Marxism adapted to Chinese circumstances) and the "socialist market economy" respectively.
Ideology of the Communist Party of China
In 2007, Hu Jintao noted in a speech that "people's democracy is the lifeblood of socialism ... without democracy there can be no socialism, and there can be no socialist modernization." To be clear, democracy, in the CCP's understanding of the word, does not mean democracy as practiced in liberal democracies. Instead it means the creation of a more balanced, equal society, "with socialism bringing about social justice. The CCP still believes that the Party and country is led by the unity of the peasant and working classes. However, for the further development of democracy and socialism, stability is needed.
Yang Xiaoqing in the article "A Comparative Study of Constitutional Governance and the People's Democratic Regime", published in the party's journal "Seeking Truth from Facts" in 2013, argues that the people's democratic dictatorship and Western constitutional government are mutually exclusive. She notes, in line with classical Marxist theory, that constitutionalism in general fits with the capitalist mode of production and bourgeois democracy, and does not fit in with China's socialist system of people's democratic dictatorship. Constitutional government has a market economy in which private property plays the predominant role, as the basis unlike the Chinese socialist market economy in which public ownership is the basis. The rallying cries of the liberal revolutions in the 17th and 18th century she notes was "Private property is sacred and inviolable, and constitutional governance was established around this premise. While things have changed since the 17th and 18th centuries the basic premise remains the same in Western societies; a small government which protects the interests of private property.