1975 Constitution of China

The 1975 Constitution of the People's Republic of China was a communist state constitution promulgated by the 4th National People's Congress. The offices of Chairman and Vice-chairman were officially scrapped under the Constitution after almost 7 years of functional non-existence since the purge of Liu Shaoqi.

History

The 1975 Constitution remained in effect for about three years due to the death of Mao Zedong and the rise of Hua Guofeng the following year, the latter of whom ordered its replacement with a new document to solidify his position as Mao's successor. It was thus the shortest-lived constitution in the history of the People's Republic of China.

Content

This Constitution reduced the total number of articles to just thirty, compared to 106 of articles in the 1954 Constitution of the People's Republic of China.

While the 1954 constitution had previously restricted any mention of Chinese Communist Party to preamble, leaving a document with a nominally liberal democratic text, the 1975 Constitution witnessed an integration (in part) of party and state. The Constitution states that the People's Liberation Army, the armed services of the PRC, is to be controlled by the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and that the right to nominate the Premier of the State Council belongs to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Such linkage between party and state would no longer be seen in later Constitutions, particularly after 1982. The most significant link, however, came in Article 2, which stated that the Chinese Communist Party was the leading force of the Chinese people.

External links

• The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1975)
• The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1975)