text: Under the concept of whole-process people's democracy, whether a country is democratic should not be measured by the electoral process but instead by the results it delivers to the people. By using the improvement of living standards and development as the measure of democratic success, this framing favors China, which has undergone major advances in development and living standards during the last four decades.
  Consultative democracy
  The Xi Jinping administration promotes a view of consultative democracy (xieshang minzhu 协商民主) rather than intra-party democracy. This view of socialist democracy emphasizes consulting more often with society at large while strengthening the leading role of the party. Through consultative democracy, Chinese policymakers seek to balance conflicting interests and stakeholders as long as they do not challenge the CCP priorities, with the main channel for this being the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). The CPPCC is an institutional component of the CCP's people's democracy and united front strategy, which provides a "seat" for the eight small legally-permitted parties and independent nonparty "friends." These eight parties were founded before the proclamation of the PRC, and they must accept the "leading role" of the CCP as a condition of their continued existence.
  Such institutional mechanisms for addressing the interests of new elites while also taking into account disadvantaged groups have been described by academics as "administrative absorption of society" or "democracy in governance."