People’s Democratic Dictatorship
인민민주독재
The form of state of the People’s Republic of China formulated by Mao Zedong in “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” of 30 June 1949. Led by the working class through the Communist Party and based on the alliance of workers and peasants, it practises democracy for “the people”, the working class, peasantry, urban petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie, and dictatorship over the landlords, bureaucrat-capitalists and Kuomintang reactionaries. Article 1 of the Common Program defined the new state as a new-democratic state practising this dictatorship.
In depth
In an essay for the party’s twenty-eighth anniversary Mao defined it thus: “The combination of these two aspects, democracy for the people and dictatorship over the reactionaries, is the people’s democratic dictatorship.” Within the people there would be freedom of speech, assembly and association and the vote, while the reactionaries were deprived of the right to speak, and members of the reactionary classes unwilling to work would be remoulded through labour by the state. The national bourgeoisie belonged to the people but, because of the weakness of its economic position, could not lead the revolution or have the chief role in state power.
The same essay proclaimed “leaning to one side”, siding with the Soviet Union and the People’s Democracies, and said that the abolition of state power and of classes was the road all mankind must take, but “not right now”. The large star of the Five-star Red Flag was explained as the Communist Party and the four small stars as the four classes named in this essay.
After the general line for the transition period of 1953 the national bourgeoisie became an object of socialist transformation, and the boundary of “the people” was redrawn in each political campaign.