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Two Sessions 2021
ChinaPolitics

Explainer | How well are women and ethnic minorities represented in China’s National People’s Congress?

  • Women now make up around 25 per cent of the legislature, but men from the dominant Han group still hold most of the top leadership positions
  • Ethnic minorities hold 14.5 per cent of seats – but as one observer notes, they are not able to discuss sensitive topics such as Xinjiang

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Deputies at an NPC session on Monday. Photo: Xinhua
Sarah Zheng

Beijing has long touted its national legislature as a representative mechanism for China’s people, but the make-up of its delegates show that women do not yet hold up half the sky.

Women and members of China’s 55 recognised ethnic minorities remain locked out of leadership positions within the National People’s Congress (NPC), while the Politburo Standing Committee – the Communist Party’s top decision-making body – consists of seven men from the dominant Han ethnic group. Within the 25-member Politburo, there is only one woman, Vice-Premier Sun Chunlan, and there are no ethnic minority members.

Rory Truex, a China politics specialist from Princeton University, said that while there is diversity within the national legislature, groups such as government officials, Communist Party cadres and businesspeople are generally over-represented, while there is underrepresentation of the working class.

Deputies are chosen based on their professional credentials and are selected by legislatures at the provincial, autonomous region and municipal levels.

They help shape policy in key areas such as education, health and employment, and Truex noted that “if you have fewer women or fewer people from the working class in any political body in China or elsewhere, it’s going to have consequences for policymaking”.

He said: “The general pattern is that you see women and minorities and other marginalised groups have access to institutions like the NPC or the People’s Congresses all the way down [to a grassroots level], or the CPPCC [Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference], but for the real organs of power, there’s a glass ceiling. They’re not really given access to real positions of power.”

Women represent 25 per cent of the 2,953 deputies in the current NPC and 20.5 per cent of the 2,156 members of the CPPCC, the country’s top political advisory body.

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