Two Sessions
The Two Sessions, or in Chinese Lianghui is a common Mandarin Chinese abbreviation for a pair of organizations which have close relations.
In the Chinese government, the term refers to the annual plenary sessions of the national or local People's Congress and the national or local committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. It is used also by the officially sanctioned Protestant and Catholic churches in China, and has been used by some to avoid Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China.Governmental usages
When referring to politics of the People's Republic of China, "national lianghui" refers to annual plenary sessions of the two organizations that make national-level political decisions: the National People's Congress and the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
A less common political usage of lianghui is abbreviating the Republic of China's Straits Exchange Foundation in Taipei, and the PRC's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits in Beijing.Internet usages
During the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, the word lianghui became a covert means of avoiding Internet censorship. When PRC censors attempted to limit news of the Arab Spring 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, it would effectively block internet news about the governmental NPC and CPPCC meetings.
