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Here's Question No. 4 (It's a Country Context question.):
The most recent meeting of the Peoples National Congress in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) focused on economic policies. Describe how much power the NPC has to make and implement economic policy in the PRC. Identify two pieces of evidence that support your answer and explain how that evidence supports your answer. (5 point question)
(See parts 3 and 6 of chapter 8 "The Peoples Republic of China" in What You Need to Know.)
1 comment:
Original Question: Describe how much power the NPC has to make and implement economic policy in the PRC. Identify two pieces of evidence that support your answer and explain how that evidence supports your answer. (5 point question)
The five points come from
1 point: answering the question. (NPC has little or now power. In fact, a few years ago a handful of no votes made big news.)
2 points each for identifying a piece of evidence and adequately explaining why that evidence supports the answer to the question.
Sample response:
"The NPC has virtually no power to independently make and implement economic policies…"
One point
"… as decisions are made by the higher Central Committee and the secretive Politburo…"
So far that's an assertion of fact.
"Economic decisions must be made occasionally and must be able to easily respond to situations in the economy but since the NPC only meets every 5 years to decide on economic issues, these meetings become merely forums for the official rubber stamping of economic decisions made or planned before hand…"
Now there's enough explanation to get two points (identifying a piece of evidence and explaining it.
"The only power it has to influence such policy is through the election of the also inefficient central committee (which meets once a year) which elect the standing committee/politburo."
Here's the identification of another potential piece of evidence, but the explanation sounds pretty much the same as the one before it. There are two explanation hinted at here: indirect elections and the asserted inefficiency of the central committee. Neither is adequately explained.
In the rubrics that readers use to grade the AP FRQs, this is one case where the two points are dependent upon one another. A good identification MUST be accompanied by an adequate explanation. And an adequate explanation MUST be accompanied by a good identification. In this case no points are earned for the second piece of evidence.
This response would earn 3 of 5 points. That's good. If you did that well on all the FRQs, your score would be in the range of those that earned 3s and 4s on the exam (depending, of course on how well you did on the multiple-choice section). If this and another of the 8 FRQs were the low points in your FRQ attempts, you'd be on the way to earning a 4 or 5, depending upon your multiple-choice score.
Other pieces of evidence that would be acceptable for this question (if adequately explained) would be:
• the near absence of dissenting votes on proposals and candidates submitted to the MPC by the Central Committee and the Standing Committee
• the fact that all proposed policies and bills voted on by the NPC come from the smaller, more select bodies
• the fact that the members of the standing committee are nearly all members of the highest ranks of government and Communist Party
• election to the NPC is often the result of celebrity (especially Olympic stars), model worker status, and community service (it's often regarded as a reward that gives people a couple weeks in Beijing on an expense account) rather than political activity and knowledge. That's obviously not true for the 50-60% of NPC delegates who are Party members or the 10-15% who are military representatives. This would require the most explanation of these pieces of evidence.
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