You’ve maybe heard of the “Two Sessions” (两会; “Two Meetings”), that take place every year in Beijing, whereby the upper echelons of the Chinese authorities thrash out what they might achieve in the coming while. And every 5 years, there’s a big one. Black cat; 2023 is the year.
你可能听说过每年在北京举行的“两会”，中国当局的高层会讨论他们未来可能取得的成就。每五年就会发生一次大事件。黑猫； 2023 年是这一年。
However, together, if you were to speak them aloud, “National People’s Congress” (NPC) and “Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference” (CPPCC) alone take 5 seconds to say.
但如果把它们放在一起大声说出来，光是“全国人民代表大会”和“中国人民政治协商会议”就需要5秒钟的时间才能说完。
So, let us sum it up for you, real fast.
那么，让我们快速为您总结一下。
As the saying goes, there ain’t no party like the Communist Party of China (CPC). You bet. The CPC holds a whopping 2,157 of the 2,987 seats in the NPC. But the remaining 830 are occupied by a surprising array of other political groups, such as the China Association for Promoting Democracy, the Chinese Peasants’ and Workers’ Democratic Party, and the China Party for Public Interest.
俗话说，没有一个政党像中国共产党一样。你打赌。在全国人大2987个席位中，中国共产党占有高达2157个席位。但剩下的 830 个席位却被一系列其他政治团体占据，如中国民主促进会、中国农工民主党和中国公益党。
The CPPCC, on the other hand, is a little more complicated, but China’s constitution says that it provides for “multi-party cooperation and political consultation”.
另一方面，政协则稍微复杂一些，但中国宪法规定它规定“多党合作和政治协商”。
Members are selected through dialogue and recommendation, represent all sectors of society, just as with China’s banknotes, and comprise a much broader range of people than is typical for a Chinese-government institution.
成员是通过对话和推荐选出的，代表社会各阶层，就像中国的钞票一样，其成员范围比中国政府机构的典型成员要广泛得多。
We could think of it this way. The NPC is China’s parliament, or government, and the CPPCC promotes transparency and holds the government to account.
我们可以这样想。全国人大是中国的议会或政府，而政协则提倡透明度并对政府问责。
To a degree, one may also imagine the structure as much like the American model of a Senate and Congress, or in the United Kingdom where they have the House of Commons and House of Lords. In essence, it’s all about checks and balances. Making sure people toe the line, when they are, after all, representing us, the people.
在某种程度上，人们也可以想象这种结构就像美国模式的参议院和国会，或者英国的下议院和上议院模式。本质上，这都是关于制衡的。确保人们遵守规则，毕竟他们代表的是我们人民。
Back in China, it is this structure of the NPC and CPPCC that trickles all the way down to provincial, city, district, county and village levels of government, providing for purpose and essentially, a to-do list for local authorities.
回到中国，全国人大和政协的这种结构一直延伸到省、市、区、县和村各级政府，为地方当局提供了目的和实质上的待办事项清单。
And the political importance of the Two Sessions is why your VPN isn’t working.
两次会议的政治重要性就是您的 VPN 无法正常工作的原因。
