[MUSIC]
So now let's talk about the relationship between the government and the party.
The most important government organization is the State Council which
is really the equivalent of a Western cabinet.
Has maybe sixty ministers or members.
But it has a Standing Committee of about 15 people to make the key decisions.
It meets, we believe, about once or twice a week.
It's run by the Prime Minister.
But we also find a high degree of overlap between the members
of this organization and members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
So for example, the Prime Minister was usually the third ranking member
of the Politburo Standing Committee, but
now Li Keqiang, who is the current Prime Minister, is actually number two.
Some Vice Premiers, such as the man named Zhang Gaoli is an executive
Vice Premiere, but he's also the last,
he's the seventh member of the Politburo Standing Committee.
Now the State Council really can make a lot of very important announcements, and
the Prime Minister himself often needs the support of the General Secretary of
the Communist Party if he really wants to push through his policies.
Now, the party penetrates the government at every level of the system.
Every government office, every university department or
every state-owned enterprise has a party branch, and a party secretary.
And this was actually very important in the early days of the take over, and
you establish really a parallel government and party structure.
And now today, for example, if you set up a new foreigner joint venture,
they may try and get, now they're trying to get them put
a communist party secretary or a communist party group in that.
Now, province has a governor, and also has the party secretary.
And the ladder, the party secretary, really has much greater authority and
can intervene a lot more, and that's actually in terms of upward mobility.
That's a more important position, to be in the party's secretary in a province.
It's much easier to jump up to Beijing than it would be to be a governor.
In a state owned enterprise, there's the party secretary and
he generally wields more power than the manager.
And politics permitting, the party's secretary will try and
intervene in economic decisions.
What I mean by politics permitting is that if it's a period of more leftist or
sort of the general tenor in China then people may try,