There’s something peculiar about the annual sessions of China’s National People’s Congress (NPC). Nominally the supreme decision-making body under the Constitution, the NPC actually exercises little real power, other than endorsing the policies already approved by the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Yet it would be a mistake to believe that the convening of the NPC each March should not be taken seriously. After all, the Chinese government expends enormous manpower and resources to ensure that the NPC’s annual sessions are flawlessly staged. The capital gets a scrubbing, the censors work overtime to ensure that no bad news or controversy spoils the occasion and the secret police haul in dissidents to prevent them from disrupting the congress.
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