ABSTRACT
The formal structure of China’s government in the early years of the People’s Republic (PRC) closely followed the model of the Soviet Union which was a one-party state. Only one political party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), wielded any real political power; in the same way that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only political authority in the USSR. In China there are also eight minor parties, known collectively as the Democratic Parties: the continuing existence of these political groupings refl ects alliances that the Communist Party had made during the closing years of the Civil War in the 1940s. They played an important role in the early 1950s but their infl uence declined, especially after the Anti-Rightist campaign of 1957, and is now negligible.
