Great Hall of the People
The Great Hall of the People is the political hub of Beijing and home of the National People's Congress. Every year, in March, the Great Hall of the People plays host to the "liang hui" (literally means "two meetings") event, where both the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC) meet in sessions lasting for two to three weeks at the Great Auditorium. The Communist Party of China (CPC) also holds its National Congress every five years in the Great Hall of the People.
Soft power of China
China Central Television, China Radio International (CRI), Xinhua news agency, and "The China Daily" newspaper and website are the largest four state-owned media corporations. They all under control by SAPPRFT and rely on each other for producing news to the public. Xinhua News Agency is the main news source of CCTV. As they both are the official press agencies of the state, they have been tightly controlled and packaged by the government. In 2008, an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale hit Sichuan Province. China Central Television was reporting on the disaster within minutes of the quake and had reporters airing with the updates within half an hour. “Domestic disaster of any sort were too hot to handle without instruction from the state and could harm the national image” (Zhu, 2012). This earthquake was a milestone of China as the Olympics was opened in a few months later in Beijing. In the chaos of the disaster, the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China requested other Chinese news organizations not to broadcast their reports of the disaster, but instead only used information released by either CCTV or the Xinhua News Agency. This process reveals that the government controls the news.