Chinese Communist Party in the context of Chinese provinces

Provinces (Chinese: 省; pinyin: Shěng) are the most numerous type of province-level divisions in the People's Republic of China (PRC). There are currently 22 provinces administered by the PRC.

The local governments of Chinese provinces consists of a Provincial People's Government headed by a governor that acts as the executive, a Provincial People's Congress with legislative powers, and a parallel provincial branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that elects a party secretary and a provincial standing committee.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or B&R), also known as the One Belt One Road (Chinese: 一带一路; pinyin: Yīdài Yīlù) and sometimes called the New Silk Road, is a global infrastructure and economic development strategy of the government of the People's Republic of China.

The initiative was launched by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2013 while visiting Kazakhstan. It aims to invest in over 150 countries and international organizations through six overland economic corridors and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The BRI is central to Chinese foreign policy, promoting trade connectivity and China's leadership role in global affairs. As of 2024, participating countries account for nearly 75% of the world's population and over half of global GDP. Supporters highlight its potential to boost global trade and growth, particularly in developing countries, while critics raise concerns over environmental impact, human rights, and debt-related dependence.

The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part of World War II, and often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. It was the largest Asian war in the 20th century. It is known in China as the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

On 18 September 1931, the Japanese staged the Mukden incident, a false flag event fabricated to justify their invasion of Manchuria and establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is sometimes marked as the beginning of the war. From 1931 to 1937, China and Japan engaged in skirmishes, including in Shanghai and in Northern China. Nationalist and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, respectively led by Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, had fought each other in the Chinese Civil War since 1927. In late 1933, Chiang Kai-shek encircled the Chinese Communists in an attempt to finally destroy them, forcing the Communists into the Long March, resulting in the Communists losing around 90% of their men. As a Japanese invasion became imminent, Chiang still refused to form a united front before he was placed under house arrest by his subordinates who forced him to form the Second United Front in late 1936 in order to resist the Japanese invasion together.

The unequal treaties were a series of agreements made between Asian countries—most notably Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and Joseon Korea—and Western countries—most notably the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the United States and Russia—during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were often signed following a military defeat suffered by the Asian party, or amid military threats made by the Western party. The terms specified obligations to be borne almost exclusively by the Asian party and included provisions such as the cession of territory, payment of reparations, opening of treaty ports, relinquishment of the right to control tariffs and imports, and granting of extraterritoriality to foreign citizens.

With the rise of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism in the 1920s, both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party used the concept to characterize the Chinese experience of losing sovereignty between roughly 1840 to 1950. The term "unequal treaty" became associated with the concept of China's "century of humiliation", especially the concessions to foreign powers and the loss of tariff autonomy through treaty ports, and continues to serve as a major impetus for the foreign policy of China today.

The Republic of China (ROC) was established on 1 January 1912 as a sovereign state in mainland China following the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and ended China's imperial history. From 1927, the Kuomintang (KMT) reunified the country and initially ruled it as a one-party state with Nanjing as the national capital. In 1949, the KMT-led government was defeated in the Chinese Civil War and lost control of the mainland to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP established the People's Republic of China (PRC) while the ROC was forced to retreat to Taiwan; the ROC retains control over the Taiwan Area, and its political status remains disputed. The ROC is recorded as a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations, and previously held a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council until 1971, when the PRC took the seat of China from the ROC in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. It was also a member of the Universal Postal Union and the International Olympic Committee. The ROC claimed 11.4 million km (4.4 million sq mi) of territory, and its population of 541 million in 1949 made it the most populous country in the world.

The Republic of China was officially proclaimed on 1 January 1912 by revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen, the ROC's founder and provisional president of the new republic, following the success of the 1911 Revolution. Puyi, the final Qing emperor, abdicated on 12 February 1912. Sun served briefly before handing the presidency to Yuan Shikai, the leader of the Beiyang Army. Yuan's Beiyang government quickly became authoritarian and exerted military power over the administration; in 1915, Yuan attempted to replace the Republic with his own imperial dynasty until popular unrest forced him to back down. When Yuan died in 1916, the country fragmented between local commanders of the Beiyang Army, beginning the Warlord Era defined by decentralized conflicts between rival cliques. At times, the most powerful of these cliques used their control of Beijing to assert claims to govern the entire Republic.

The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 10 December 1949.

The war is generally divided into two phases with an interlude: from August 1927 to 1937, the First United Front alliance of the KMT and CCP collapsed during the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalists controlled most of China. From 1937 to 1945, hostilities were mostly put on hold as the Second United Front fought the Japanese invasion of China with eventual help from the Allies of World War II. However, armed clashes between the groups remained common. Exacerbating the divisions within China further was the formation of the Wang Jingwei regime, a Japan-sponsored puppet government led by Wang Jingwei, which was established to nominally govern the regions of China that came under Japanese occupation.

Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, the remnants of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), alongside many refugees, retreated to the island of Taiwan (Formosa) beginning on December 7, 1949. The exodus is sometimes called the Great Retreat (Chinese: 大撤退) in Taiwan. The Nationalist Kuomintang party (KMT), its officers, and approximately 2 million ROC troops took part in the retreat, in addition to many civilians and refugees, fleeing the advance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP, who now effectively controlled most of mainland China, spent the subsequent years purging any remnant Nationalist agents in western and southern China, solidifying the rule of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC).

ROC troops mostly fled to Taiwan from provinces in southern China, in particular Sichuan Province, where the last stand of the ROC's main army took place. The flight to Taiwan took place over four months after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the PRC in Beijing on October 1, 1949. The island of Taiwan remained part of Japan during the occupation until Japan severed its territorial claims in the Treaty of San Francisco, which came into effect in 1952. In addition, some of the ROC troops in Yunnan also fled to Burma, where the insurgency lasted until 1961.

The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the sole ruling party of the country during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until its relocation to Taiwan, and in Taiwan ruled under martial law until 1987. The KMT is a centre-right to right-wing party and the largest in the Pan-Blue Coalition, one of the two main political groups in Taiwan. Its primary rival is the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest party in the Pan-Green Coalition. As of 2025, the KMT is the largest single party in the Legislative Yuan and is chaired by Cheng Li-wun.

The party was founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1894 in Honolulu, Hawaii, as the Revive China Society. He reformed the party in 1919 in the Shanghai French Concession under its current name. From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully unified China in the Northern Expedition against regional warlords, leading to the fall of the Beiyang government. After initially allying with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the First United Front, the party under Chiang purged communist members. It was the sole ruling party of China from 1928 to 1949 but gradually lost control while fighting the Empire of Japan in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the CCP in the Chinese Civil War. In December 1949, the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan following its defeat by the communists.

A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system. In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or have limited and controlled participation in elections. The expression "de facto one-party" is sometimes used to describe a dominant-party system that, unlike a one-party state, allows (at least nominally) multiparty elections, but the existing practices or balance of political power effectively prevent the opposition from winning power.

Membership in the ruling party tends to be relatively small compared to the population. Rather, they give out private goods to fellow elites to ensure continued support. One-party, compared to dominant-party dictatorships, structure themselves unlike democracies. They also turn into multi-party democracies at a lower rate than dominant-party dictatorships. While one-party states prohibit opposition parties, some allow for independent candidates to stand for election in competition with party candidates. Therefore, they place elites and sympathetic candidates in key administrative races. For example, the Chinese Communist Party exercises political control by infiltrating village administrations. They view these positions as crucial for gathering information on the population and maintaining a presence in the far reaches of their borders.

A Party Committee Secretary is the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organization in a province, city, village, or other administrative unit. In most cases, it is the de facto highest political office of its area of jurisdiction. The term can also be used for the leadership position of CCP organizations in state-owned enterprises, private companies, foreign-owned companies, universities, research institutes, hospitals, as well as other institutions of the state.

Post-Cultural Revolution, the CCP is responsible for the formulation of policies and the government is responsible for its day-to-day execution. At every level of jurisdiction, a government leader serves alongside the party secretary. For example, in the case of a province, the provincial Party Secretary is the de facto highest office, but the government is headed by a government leader called a "Governor" (simplified Chinese: 省长; traditional Chinese: 省長; pinyin: shěng zhǎng). The Governor is usually the second-highest-ranking official in the party's Provincial Committee, and holds the concurrent title of "Deputy Party Committee Secretary" (simplified Chinese: 省委副书记; traditional Chinese: 省委副書記; pinyin: shěng wěi fù shū jì). A similar comparison can be made for municipal Party Secretaries and Mayors in city-level, or even for the general secretary of CCP and the Premier of State Council in state-level.

Members of the standing committees of the Chinese Communist Party provincial-level committees, commonly referred to as Shengwei Changwei (Chinese: 省委常委; pinyin: shěngwěi chángwěi), make up the top ranks of the provincial-level organizations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In theory, the Standing Committee of a Party Committee manages the day-to-day party affairs of a provincial party organization, and are selected from the members of the provincial-level Party Committee at large. In practice, Shengwei Changwei is a position with significant political power, and their appointments are essentially directed by the central leadership through the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

The government of the People's Republic of China is based on a system of people's congress within the parameters of a unitary communist state, in which the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) enacts its policies through people's congresses. This system is based on the principle of unified state power, in which the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), is constitutionally enshrined as "the highest state organ of power." As China's political system has no separation of powers, there is only one branch of government which is represented by the legislature. The CCP through the NPC enacts unified leadership, which requires that all state organs, from the Supreme People's Court to the State Council of China, are elected by, answerable to, and have no separate powers than those granted to them by the NPC. By law, all elections at all levels must adhere to the leadership of the CCP. The CCP controls appointments in all state bodies through a two-thirds majority in the NPC. The remaining seats are held by nominally independent delegates and eight minor political parties, which are non-oppositional and support the CCP. All government bodies and state-owned enterprises have internal CCP committees that lead the decision-making in these institutions.

The NPC meets annually for about two weeks in March to review and approve major new policy directions, and in between those sessions, delegates its powers to the working legislature, the NPC Standing Committee (NPCSC). This organ adopts most national legislation, interprets the constitution and laws, and conducts constitutional reviews, and is headed by the chairman, one of China's top officials. The president is a ceremonial office and has no real power but represents China abroad, though since the 1990s, the presidency has always been held by the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Elected separately by the NPC, the vice president has no power other than what the president bestowed on them but assists the president. The head of the State Council, the NPC's executive organ, is the premier. The General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party is China's leading official since the CCP is tasked with formulating and setting national policy which the state, after being adopted by the NPC or relevant state organ, is responsible for implementing.

The general secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (Chinese: 中国共产党中央委员会总书记; pinyin: Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Wěiyuánhuì Zǒngshūjì) is the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The general secretary leads the CCP Central Committee. Since 1989, the CCP general secretary has been the paramount leader of the PRC.

The position of the general secretary of the Central Committee was established at the 4th Party National Congress in 1925, when Chen Duxiu, one of the founders of the CCP, was elected as the first General Secretary. After the 7th National Congress, the position was replaced by the Chairman of the Central Committee, which was held by Mao Zedong until his death in 1976. The post was re-established at the 12th National Congress in 1982 and replaced the Party Chairman as the highest leadership position of the CCP; Hu Yaobang was the first General Secretary. Since Jiang Zemin's leadership in the 1990s, the holder of the post has been, except for transitional periods, the president of China, making the holder the state representative, and the chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the supreme commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The Harmonious Society, also known as Socialist Harmonious Society, is a socioeconomic concept in China that is recognized as a response to the increasing alleged social injustice and inequality emerging in mainland Chinese society as a result of unchecked economic growth, which has led to social conflict. The governing philosophy has therefore shifted around economic growth to overall societal balance and harmony. Along with a moderately prosperous society, it was set to be one of the national goals for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The concept of social harmony dates back to ancient China, to the time of Confucius. As a result, the philosophy has also been characterized as a form of New Confucianism. In modern times, it developed into a key feature of CCP general secretary Hu Jintao's signature ideology of the Scientific Outlook on Development developed in the mid-2000s, being re-introduced by the Hu–Wen Administration during the 10th National People's Congress.

Chinese Marxist philosophy is the philosophy of dialectical materialism that was introduced into China in the early 1900s and continues in Chinese academia to the current day.

Marxist philosophy was initially imported into China between 1900 and 1930, in translations from German, Russian, and Japanese. The Chinese translator of Darwin's The Origin of Species, Ma Junwu, was also the first one who introduced Marxism into China. For Ma, evolutionism and Marxism are the secrets of social development. This was before the formal dialectical materialism of the Chinese Communist Party, in which many independent radical intellectuals embraced Marxism. Many of them later joined the Party.

Jiangxi is an inland province in east China. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north into hillier areas in the south and east, it borders Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, and Hubei to the northwest. Major cities include its capital Nanchang, Ganzhou, and Jiujiang.

After the 1911 Revolution ended the Qing dynasty, Jiangxi became one of the earliest bases for the Chinese Communist Party. The Nanchang uprising took place in Jiangxi on 1 August 1927, beginning the Chinese Civil War. In 1931, the Chinese Soviet Republic's government was established in Ruijin, which is sometimes called the "Former Red Capital".

Marxism–Leninism (Russian: марксизм-ленинизм, romanized: marksizm-leninizm) is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most communist governments throughout the 20th century. It was developed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by Joseph Stalin and drew on elements of Bolshevism, Leninism, and Marxism. It was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevization.

Today, Marxism–Leninism is the de jure ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, as well as many other communist parties. The state ideology of North Korea is derived from Marxism–Leninism, although its evolution is disputed.

Sky burial (Tibetan: བྱ་གཏོར་, Wylie: bya gtor, lit. "bird-scattered") is a funeral practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements, or to be eaten by scavenging animals, especially crows, vultures, bears and jackals. Comparable excarnation practices are part of Zoroastrian burial rites where deceased are exposed to the elements and scavenger birds on stone structures called Dakhma. Sky burials are endemic to Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, as well as in Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, and parts of India such as Sikkim and Zanskar. The locations of preparation and sky burial are understood in the Vajrayana Buddhist traditions as charnel grounds. Few such places remain operational today, as the practice was completely banned during the Cultural Revolution as a superstitious practice; in modern times, the practice is regulated by the Chinese Communist Party due to the ongoing decline of vulture populations.

The majority of Tibetan people and many Mongols adhere to Vajrayana Buddhism, which teaches the transmigration of spirits. In this tradition there is no need to preserve the body, as it becomes an empty vessel upon death. Birds may eat it or nature may cause it to decompose. The function of the sky burial is simply to dispose of the remains in as generous a way as possible (the origin of the practice's Tibetan name). In much of Tibet and Qinghai, the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and due to the scarcity of fuel and timber, sky burials were typically more practical than the traditional Buddhist practice of cremation, which has been limited to high lamas and some other dignitaries.