How are China’s 20th Communist Party congress delegates chosen?

The 2,296 delegates to China’s 20th Communist Party congress, set to convene in Beijing on Sunday, have the task of endorsing plans that will determine the trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy over the next five years.

They will also endorse a list of members of the Central Committee, a body of more than 300 top party members, including President Xi Jinping, who is set to secure a third term as the party’s leader during the congress.

The delegates, who represent more than 96 million Communist Party members nationwide, were chosen through a process that is much different from elections in the West and requires a series of recommendations and reviews by the party.

In November, the organisation department, which manages personnel affairs within the party, announced that about 2,300 delegates would be chosen from 38 electoral units representing provinces, state-owned enterprises, the central financial sector and central authorities.

Between November and July, the delegates were put through a five-stage “rigorous and meticulous election process”, according to state news agency Xinhua.

First, each electoral unit’s organisation department nominated a pool of candidates.

According to Xinhua, Xi issued instructions on the delegate selection process, saying it should set strict standards for candidates, carefully review their integrity, stringently enforce electoral discipline and enhance party leadership.

Organisation department head Chen Xi said loyalty, competence and integrity were some of the key qualities the party looked for when selecting a new generation of leaders.

The department said candidates would be evaluated on their commitment to party doctrine, including loyalty towards Xi, and delegates must include “model workers, farmers and professionals” as well as ethnic minorities.

The nominees were then reviewed by local discipline inspection and supervision organs.

In the southwestern province of Guizhou, a blacklist was set up to disqualify candidates who had violated party discipline rules or were deemed to have poor integrity, Xinhua reported.

About six months before the national congress, members of the party committee of each electoral unit voted on a shortlist of candidates.

Finally, each electoral unit formally elected delegates based on the submissions of all subordinate party organisations and sent its list of delegates to the Central Committee for evaluation by a qualification review committee.

Delegates to Communist Party congress named as plans enter last stages

On September 26, the final delegate list was released. In addition to central political officials and regional party chiefs and governors, the delegation includes party representatives from a variety of sectors.

The electoral units were encouraged to select delegates who had made significant contributions in poverty alleviation, technological innovation and the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. This year’s delegates include veteran infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan and Wang Yaping, China’s first female astronaut to conduct extravehicular activities.

Frontline workers account for 33.6 per cent of this year’s delegates. According to a tally by the Post, female representation has increased 3 percentage points to 27 per cent, or 619 delegates, while ethnic minority delegates total 264, or around 12 per cent – about the same as the previous party congress.

Victor Shih, a scholar of Chinese political economy at the University of California, San Diego, noted that women, who account for nearly half of China’s population, were still under-represented among delegates.

“What is more distressing is that they elect a Central Committee that has a very low share of women, less than 10 per cent. I don’t think that will change at the 20th party congress,” he said.

“Both the party congress delegates and Central Committee members are still dominated by Han males who work either in an SOE, government service unit, or a part of the government, including the vast majority of ‘frontline workers’.”

In Chinese politics, real decisions are often made before the formal meeting, which mainly serves to legitimise and tell others about the results.

Top leaders use the congress to explain decisions to a wider circle, and the delegates in turn endorse outcomes in a formal vote. The delegates also serve as important conduits to spread the message back in their respective constituencies.

Shih said the national delegates were not elected by rank-and-file party members in most cases, except in some central government units. Instead, they were chosen as a result of step-by-step elections by lower-level party delegations.

“The preferences of rank-and-file party members are highly filtered by the elite in this process. It is electoral, but not especially democratic, according to most political science definitions of ‘democracy’,” Shih said.

He explained that most elections in China were indirect, where people or ordinary party members elected delegates who then elected local leaders. The local leaders then elected higher-level local leaders before national delegates elected national leaders, both in the party and for the state.