The Chinese police derive their authority from the state through a centralized system. Applying a PESTEL analysis provides insight into the historical and contemporary considerations that established the authority and legitimacy of the police in the country, and also provides context for the Chinese police system in the transnational landscape. The political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors that have had a direct influence on the legitimacy of Chinese police are described below. PoliticsThe People's Republic of China (PRC) is a one-party communist state. Coming out of World War II, China went through a period of civil war, which led communist leader Mao Zedong to establish mainland China as a communist country in 1949. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was rooted in a theory of class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat. In Marxist political thought, this refers to a state in which the working class controls the government; However, China's government is shaped on the Stalinist model, in which other political parties are prohibited from engaging in the governing process. In effect, this means that the CCP is the government and the party leaders are the leaders of the country, with most people absent from any active participation in politics. The authority for different parts of the bureaucracy comes from the central government. This top-down power structure is the same for the police. (CIA World Factbook)China's adoption of the USSR's communist model of government was accompanied by Soviet assistance in establishing police forces. The PRC's early police forces largely resembled Soviet Militsiya police systems. In the early years of the PRC, the police not only...... middle of paper ...... evidence is collected and the way suspects are interrogated. Although these in theory mirror many of the protections found in Western countries, the results are different. For example, China's justice system has a conviction rate of 98 percent. Other meso-level legitimacy considerations that fall outside the scope of a PESTEL analysis focus on transnational relations between China and other countries. China faces pressure from other developed countries (i.e. Western Europe and the United States) to address human rights issues in its country. To be sure, these countries have taken few punitive measures against China due to the interdependencies of their economies, as Chinese. China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and participates in INTERPOL; however, China has not submitted a declaration of jurisdiction to the International Court of Justice.