Provincial People's Congresses

This is a report of a short trip made in November 1997 to investigate the workings of the Provincial People's Congresses ( sheng renda : PPCs) in Shandong and Heilongjiang as part of a more general enquiry into the democratic possibilities of the mainland's renda (NPC) system in the light of democratization in Taiwan. The visit was somewhat zouma kanhua , but since the Heilongjiang PPC at least had never before had an English-speaking visitor, some of the observations are possibly worth wider currency.