The Two Sessions () is the collective term for the annual plenary sessions of the

National People's Congress The National People's Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the Sta ...

and of the

National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference The National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference is the national-level organization that represents the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the political advisory body in the People's Republic ...

, which are typically both held every March at the

Great Hall of the People The Great Hall of the People is a state building situated to the west of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It is used for legislative and ceremonial activities by the government of the People's Republic of China. The People's Great Hall functions as ...

in Xicheng,

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

around the same dates. The Two Sessions last for about ten days. During the Two Sessions, the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) hear and discuss reports from the premier of the State Council, the

president of the Supreme People's Court The president of the Supreme People's Court is the head of the Supreme People's Court and is the highest-ranking official in the Chinese judiciary. Under the current constitution, the president of the SPC is appointed by and serves at the pleasu ...

, and the procurator-general.

Other uses of the term

During the

2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests The 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, also known as the Greater Chinese Democratic Jasmine Revolution, refer to public assemblies in over a dozen cities in China starting on 20 February 2011, inspired by and named after the Jasmine Revolut ...

, the term for the Two Sessions in Chinese, ''lianghui'', became a covert means of avoiding

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

. When PRC censors attempted to limit news of the

Arab Spring The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...

by disabling internet searches for Chinese words such as "Egypt," "Tunisia," and "jasmine", protest organizers urged bloggers and activists to call planned protests ''lianghui''. If the government were to censor this dissenters'

circumlocution Circumlocution (also called circumduction, circumvolution, periphrasis, kenning, or ambage) is the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea. It is sometimes necessary in communication (for example, to work around lexical ga ...

, it would effectively block internet news about the governmental NPC and CPPCC meetings.

References

{{Portal bar, China Politics of the People's Republic of China

Other uses of the term

See also

References