The orders of precedence in China is the ranking of political leaders in China for the purposes of event protocol and to arrange the ordering of names in official news bulletins, both written and televised. It is also sometimes used to assess perceived level of political power. Although there is no formally published ranking, there is usually an established convention and protocol, and the relative positions of Chinese political figures can usually be deduced from the order in meetings and especially by the time and order in which figures are covered by the official media. Since 1982, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party has been the highest ranking official in the People's Republic of China (PRC).