Chinese History and Statistics -- Page 26

People's Republic of China Government -- 1949 (Part 2)

De facto power is held by the CCP, which had 49 million members in 1990. In 1982 the CCP abolished the post of party chairman in favor of a general secretary and named Hu Yaobang, who had replaced Hua Guofeng as party chairman in 1981, to the post. Hu resigned in 1987 after large-scale student demonstrations and was succeeded by Zhao Ziyang, who later gave up the premier-ship to Li Peng. The Thirteenth Party Congress (October 1987) continued a transfer of power to younger leaders begun in 1985 by Deng Xiaoping. Deng himself resigned from the party politburo in 1987 and gave up his last official post (head of the state military committee) in 1989 but remained China's paramount leader. The party leadership was reshuffled in June 1989 after two months of large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations in Peking and other cities. Deng ordered the demonstrations suppressed by the army on June 4 and dismissed Zhao as general secretary. Jiang Zemin was named the new party general secretary. The Fourteenth Party Congress (October 1992) endorsed accelerated economic reforms while maintaining a hard-line stance against political dissent. Jiang Zemin was also given the posts of president and chairman of the central military commission at a party congress in March 1993.

For local administrative purposes China is divided into 21 provinces (not including Taiwan), 5 autonomous regions, and 3 cities (Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai) directly under central government control. The provinces and autonomous regions are broken down into prefectures, cities, counties, and special districts. The counties are further broken down into rural and urban administrative units, communes, and towns, respectively. Provinces and autonomous regions are governed by local People's Congresses, and lower levels of government, by local People's Governments.