The Distorting Influence of Bureaucratic Rank Chinese political culture features carefully observed systems of ranks that identify the relative importance of people, official agencies, public institutions, state-owned corporations, and geographic units. Rank consciousness affects the way that officials and their agencies interact with each other. Most damagingly, it contributes to the political system's difficulty in achieving successful inter-agency coordination and frequently undermines lines of authority.
Among the Chinese political system's governance difficulties is the phenomenon known as "stove-piping," in which individual ministries and other hierarchies share information up and down the chain of command, but not horizontally with each other.
Among the rules that govern rank in China is that entities of equivalent rank cannot issue binding orders to each other. Often, they cannot even compel coordination, although Party entities and security agencies have more clout in that respect than other entities. An entity of lesser rank seeking to coordinate with an entity of higher rank faces a daunting challenge. Many analysts attribute the well documented communication problems between the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Foreign Ministry to the large gap in their respective ranks. The PLA's Central Military Commission is of equivalent rank to the State Council, China's cabinet, while the
Foreign Ministry is a mere ministry under the State Council. For the Foreign Ministry to liaise with the PLA, it must report up to the State Council, which may have to report up further up to the Politburo in order to secure PLA cooperation
