For more than 2,000 years, the Chinese political system has been built around a highly sophisticated centralised bureaucracy, which has run what has always been a vast society through top-down methods. What China never developed was a rule of law; an independent legal institution that would limit the discretion of the government. What the Chinese substituted for formal checks on power was a bureaucracy bound by rules and customs that made its behaviour reasonably predictable, and a Confucian moral system that educated leaders to look to public interests rather than their own aggrandisement. This system is, in essence, the same one that operates today, with the Communist party taking the role of emperor.
2000多年來，中國政治體制的基礎一直是高度復雜的中央集權的官僚體制，這個官僚體制一直通過自上而下的方式管理著一個龐大的社會。中國從未建立起法治——可以限制政府的自由裁量權的獨立法律制度。中國沒有建立起正式的權力制衡機制，取而代之的是一個受各種規定及慣例約束的官僚體制，以及儒家道德體系。規定和慣例讓官僚體制的行為可以合理預測，儒家道德體系則教育領導人要考慮公共利益，而不能只顧個人權勢膨脹。今天運行的體制在本質上也是如此，皇帝的角色由共產黨充任。