Drawing on an article by Seki Hei entitled “The Astonishing Reality of China’s One-Party Dictatorship,” this article examines how the Chinese Communist Party controls not only political power but also the People’s Liberation Army, police, prosecution, courts, media, foreign affairs, and Chinese organizations operating overseas.

September 6, 2020
The following is taken from an essay by Seki Hei entitled “The Astonishing Reality of China’s ‘One-Party Dictatorship,’” published as the opening regular column in the monthly magazine WiLL.
It is an essential essay that should make not only the Japanese people but people throughout the world recognize the reality of China.
Most Japanese people know that the political system of contemporary China is a “one-party dictatorship.”
Whenever discussing that country, the Japanese media also routinely speak of its “one-party dictatorship.”
It is highly doubtful, however, whether the Japanese media truly understand the real meaning and astonishing substance of this “one-party dictatorship.”
What Japanese people ordinarily understand by China’s “one-party dictatorship” is presumably that the Chinese Communist Party monopolizes governmental power.
That understanding is correct in itself.
Political power in China is indeed monopolized by the Communist Party.
There is neither a change of government nor an election through which such a change could occur, and the government is therefore the private possession of the Communist Party.
The important point, however, is that “political power” is by no means the only thing monopolized by the Communist Party.
China, for example, has a military force called the People’s Liberation Army.
The People’s Liberation Army, however, is by no means a national military independent of political parties and the government of the time, as are the United States Armed Forces and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.
The People’s Liberation Army is, both in name and in reality, the private military force of the Chinese Communist Party, and its supreme command is the Central Military Commission, an organ of the Communist Party.
Like Japan and the United States, China also has a police force.
The police in the United States are neither the police of the Democratic Party nor those of the Republican Party, and the Japanese police do not belong to the Liberal Democratic Party merely because it is the governing party.
In China, however, the armed police, public-security police, and secret police are all controlled by the Communist Party and act at a single command from the Party.
At the summit of the nationwide police structure stands the Communist Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Commission, whose head, the secretary of the commission, concurrently serves as either a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo or a member of its Politburo Standing Committee.
The Minister of Public Security, who heads the public-security police, holds the Party rank of an ordinary member of the Central Committee, one level below the secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and is therefore subordinate to that secretary.
The police are not the only institutions controlled by the secretary and the Political and Legal Affairs Commission.
In reality, public prosecutors and courts throughout China are all placed in a position in which they must obey the orders of the central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and the corresponding commissions in each locality.
There can be no fair trials or impartial justice in such a China.
If the Political and Legal Affairs Commission decides to kill someone, the police arrest that person as ordered, the prosecution indicts that person as ordered, and the court hands down a death sentence as ordered.
A formal system of legal representation exists, but if the lawyer is a Communist Party member, that lawyer will naturally obey the orders of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission.
Even a lawyer who is not a Party member cannot defy the commission.
If the lawyer does so, the lawyer will also be arrested on the commission’s orders.
Another institution completely controlled by the Communist Party is the media, including newspapers, television stations, and magazine publishers throughout the country.
These media organizations, which are called “propaganda organs,” are controlled by Communist Party organizations known as “Party branches,” while the supreme Party organization overseeing them is the Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party.
As members of their respective Party branches, the heads of newspaper companies and television stations are required to carry out propaganda operations for the Party in obedience to orders from the Central Propaganda Department.
To illustrate this by using Japan as an example, it would be as if the Asahi Shimbun, the Nikkei, the Sankei Shimbun, Fuji Television, TV Asahi, and TBS all wrote editorials praising the Communist Party and published false articles every day in accordance with instructions from the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department, while concealing truths that should properly be reported, again in accordance with its instructions.
(Incidentally, when I read the editorials of today’s Asahi Shimbun, I sometimes wonder whether the newspaper is already writing its articles under orders from the “Central Propaganda Department of the Party,” but could this merely be an illusion on the part of this unworthy writer?)
Not only China’s domestic politics and propaganda but also its foreign affairs are, of course, under the command of the Communist Party.
The command center for foreign affairs is the “Central Leading Group for Foreign Affairs Work,” established within the core of the Communist Party, and its leader is Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.
As merely one ordinary member of the Party’s Central Committee, Foreign Minister Wang Yi is ultimately a subordinate of a subordinate of Xi Jinping.
Chinese embassies and consulates in every country are also under the Party’s direction as further subordinate organizations of the Central Leading Group for Foreign Affairs Work.
Ambassadors and consuls serving at consulates are all Communist Party members, and they perform their duties as heads or members of the Party branches established within the embassies and consulates.
Those Party branches, in turn, establish and operate additional Party branches inside Chinese companies and Chinese organizations in their host countries.
When the need arises, Chinese companies and Chinese organizations in foreign countries may obey Party orders and conduct activities that damage the national interests of their host countries for the sake of China’s national interests.
If China were ever to go to war with another country, it is also conceivable that the Communist Party branches located in that country would all begin operating simultaneously and engage in disruption, destruction, and similar activities.
Thus, China’s “one-party dictatorship” means that the Chinese Communist Party has placed the country’s military, police, media, and external apparatus entirely under its control.
The terminal organizations of this one-party dictatorship, however, have also been encroaching into places close to us, even though they are located in what should be foreign countries.
It is truly terrifying!