I'd rather think that the unelected Permanent Bureaucracy plays the role of "legislating by enforcement".

This relieves the arm of the Corporate State that's subject to ritual democratic "accountability" (a historical peculiarity of our "Corporate State Regime With Western Characteristics") from passing many potentially unpopular laws. In Europe we even have the EU to play that part. In the US, the myriad "agencies".

In China they don't need to pretend because they have their own historically peculiar flavor of the same that doesn't require elections.

But it's the same system everywhere.