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01 Jun 2020
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Political systems
Constitution of China
This is the 1954 constitution of China. 1954 Constitution
Main article: 1954 Constitution of the People's Republic of China
In accordance with the Common Program, preparations soon began for convening the first National People's Congress and the drafting of the first permanent Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
On 24 December 1952, a resolution was moved by Premier Zhou Enlai on behalf of the Communist Party of China at the 43rd meeting of the first CPPCC Standing Committee to draft the new, permanent, Constitution.
The resolution was passed, and on 13 January 1953, the Central People's Government appointed a thirty-person drafting committee led by Mao Zedong.
The drafting process was dominated by the Communist Party, and was almost exclusively restricted to the Politburo. In March 1954, the draft Constitution was passed to the CPPCC and discussed in a national education campaign in the spring and summer of 1954.
On 20 September 1954, exactly five years after the passage of the Common Program, the first meeting of the first National People's Congress unanimously approved the new Constitution. This version has subsequently been called the "1954 Constitution".
The 1954 Constitution included a preamble and 108 articles organised into four chapters. It specified a government structure remarkably similar to the current system.
Chapter Two of the 1954 Constitution set up a system of government composed of six structural parts. The highest organ of government was the legislature, the National People's Congress. The executive was composed of the President and the State Council.
Sub-national government was to be composed of people's congresses and people's committees of various levels. Autonomous ethnic areas would decide on their forms of government according to the wishes of the "majority of the people" in these areas.
Finally, a hierarchy of courts headed by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate (which would investigate crimes by the government) formed the judicial system.
Chapter Three, Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens, guaranteed a relatively comprehensive set of human rights, but also imposed the duty to pay taxes, undertake national service, and to obey the law.
Like the subsequent versions of the Constitution, the 1954 Constitution was not entrenched. It could be amended by the National People's Congress (Article 27(1)) by a special two-thirds majority (Article 29) without recourse to a referendum or other such mechanism.
The 1954 Constitution was intended to be a transitional constitution, to be revised after China developed into a socialist economy.
Source: Wikipedia
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