Abstract: Whole-process people’s democracy is an important connotation of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era as well as an important institutional tool for understanding the characteristics of China’s current democratic political system. Whole-process people’s democracy attaches importance to issues relating to the legitimacy of democracy in the traditional democratic system, such as the origin of the democratic subject, the certainty of the connotation of democracy, and the criteria for defining whether democracy exists or not, as well as such issues as how to utilize modern science and technology to continuously improve the technical guarantee capacity and standard of democratic activities and continuously raise the efficiency of the participation in the construction of democratic political system by the main body of socialist democracy, namely, the people. “New quality productive forces” promote the establishment of “new quality of production relations”, and the organic combination of “new quality” productive forces and production relations leads to the formation of the “new quality of economic foundation”, which, according to the basic principles of Marxism, promotes the change of the connotation of the superstructure itself, forming a “new quality superstructure”. Democracy, as the basic way of governing the country, belongs to the category of the superstructure in its basic nature. Therefore, the continuous growth and development of “new quality productive forces” driven by new technologies such as the Internet, big data, and AI will inevitably have an impact on socialist democracy, giving rise to “new quality democracy”. The “new quality” in this “new quality democracy” is centrally embodied in the “whole process”. Therefore, as the institutional manifestation of “new-quality democracy”, “whole-process people’s democracy” improves the governance structure of democracy itself and takes on the characteristics of democratic governance that cover all aspects of the democratic process and all sectors of society.

Key Words: Whole-process People’s Democracy; the People’s Congress System; New Quality Productivity; New Quality Democracy

Author: Mo Jihong, director and research fellow, CASS Institute of Law.

Source: 2 (2024) Law-Based Society.