No --China is not considered to be a Democracy
China is best conceived as run by an entrenched, corrupt one--party system, the spoils of which are carefully guarded and kept from the workers. While others have outlined what Communist China calls itself, this tells us little as all Communist countries engage in barely concealed propaganda. In any event, calling oneself a dictatorial democracy, an oxymoron if there ever was one, should give one pause.
According to experts and former party members, China is not a Democracy in form or purpose or effect. Consider
The congress “is far away from people’s lives, even farther away from democracy,” says Zhang Zuhua, a former party insider in Beijing. “It’s totally unrelated to people’s personal interests. People don’t put any expectations and hopes on that.”
That’s partly because the people were not even aware that a battle for who will next lead their country was underway. You certainly would never have learned it from the state media, which have been allowed to report only on the carefully scripted show that is the congress itself, not the political squabbles behind it. Not surprisingly, the average person in China has little idea that their next leader in five years may well be the Shanghai party chief, Xi Jinping, nor that he seems to have narrowly edged the Liaoning Province party boss, Li Keqiang.
If you would like an interactive graphic that depicts who rules China, go here
With more than 80 million members and 3.3 million branches, China's Communist Party is one of the world's most extensive political organizations. Here is a breakdown of how power is concentrated, in just a handful of key bodies and a few dozen people.
ABC Australia ran a fantastic program on who actually rules China and how decisions are made, a synopsis is described as:
The Politburo Standing Committee is the highest and the most powerful body of the Communist Party of China. Its officially mandated purpose is to conduct policy discussions and make decisions on major issues when the Politburo, is not in session. Although we don’t really know how it operates we do know it consists of 7 men including the Party General Secretary, Xi Jinping. But is this all powerful body in decline? A new report suggests that yes it is but what does this mean and how might it affect Xi Jinping’s leadership?
The US doesn't classify countries as Democracies or not. But you can find the US State Dept's fact sheet of China here: https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/18902.htm
