Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a nonresident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The annual sessions of the Chinese National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the so-called lianghui, are elaborately staged but substantively light political rituals. The NPC delegates attending the annual session rubber-stamp the policies and legislative proposals of the ruling Chinese Communist Party without much debate.
