Comment by orwin

China's CCP do party politics we'd have trouble to distinguish from failed democracies. They kinda fight with each other within the party, then the local CCP members vote on which delegates to send to the central committee equivalent (the NPC), and those 3000 delegates basically vote on country officials (which ultimately decides the political orientation). You also have weird political games between provincial politics and the pressure they put on delegates, and the pressure national officials put on provincial politics.

All in all, China can't be reduced to 'a dictatorship'. It's an oligarchy for sure (90 millions vote, less than 1% of the population) but it has too much political life to be reduced to that.