A fundamental feature of the China model or how China is politically organized is perhaps the existence of a single ruling party, the CPC, and a strong state with a clear administrative hierarchy. The ruling philosophy of the CPC, the relationships between the party and the state and between the central and the local, the nature of China's consultative democracy and the Chinese official management system, as well as its cultural traditions, are all critical for understanding the country's governance practice, in particular its capacity to redistribute market-created wealth for sustainable socio-economic development. A particularly remarkable aspect relates to the reasons why the Chinese party-state can continuously undertake reforms to cope with governance challenges in pursuing economic growth, equity and social stability. As a result, the China model is not only socially but also institutionally embedded, indicating that the model may not be applicable in other economies without modifications.

This chapter first discusses the cultural basis of China's governance and then analyses its political regime and administrative structure to provide a background for examining the particularities of the Chinese social model.

CULTURAL BASIS OF CHINA's GOVERNANCE

As argued in Chapter 1, cultural traditions to a certain degree can influence the governance mode that the people of a particular country can accept, although it must be acknowledged that culture interacts with other factors in shaping a particular governance mode. The obvious differences between Western countries and eastern Asian countries in containing the Covid-19 pandemic might be an example. Culture matters, although differences should be largely attributed to policy choices and/or political struggles. In the East, few people would resist their government's regulatory requirement to wear masks to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, whereas many people in some Western countries, such as the United States, protested against such a requirement. From such differences one can easily see the cultural distinctions between countries as measured on Geert Hofstede's six dimensions of culture: individualism versus collectivism; power distance; uncertainty avoidance; masculinity versus femininity; long-term versus shortterm orientation; and indulgence versus restraint (Minkov & Hofstede 2011).