Villagers in Fengtian, Neijiang city, Sichuan province, vote for their leader on March 6. [Photo by Huang Zhenghua/for China Daily]

Residents' suggestions and opinions heard at national level

In the early 1940s, a popular saying vividly captured the enthusiasm among local voters when the Communist Party of China was based in Yan'an, Shaanxi province.

The saying proclaimed, "Beans roll, beans vote, beans go to the right bowls."

In those years, the CPC devised a simple method to ensure that illiterate farmers exercised their right to vote. Voters cast beans representing ballots into bowls placed on a table. There was one bowl for each candidate.

The CPC, from revolutionary times to ruling New China since 1949, has led the nation in exploring and developing a model of democracy that suits China's conditions, with the people as "masters of the country".

Delivering a speech at a grand gathering in Beijing on July 1 to mark the Party's centenary, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, highlighted the development of "whole-process people's democracy".

The term whole-process democracy was first put forward by Xi, who is also China's president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, during an inspection tour of Shanghai's Hongqiao subdistrict in November 2019.

Exchanging ideas with community residents who took part in a survey on legislation, Xi said, "We are marching on a political development road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and our people's democracy is a whole-process democracy."