<p>Although extensive literature examines the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation in the legislatures of liberal democracies, it remains under-researched whether this relationship depends on multiparty competitive elections or can also be observed in single-party legislatures. Drawing on original datasets containing 75,797 proposals submitted to China’s National People’s Congress between 2008 and 2017, this article reveals that descriptive representation in single-party legislatures partly facilitates substantive representation. Specifically, deputies who are women, members of ethnic minorities, workers, farmers, or professionals tend to submit significantly more proposals related to their respective group-based issues. For certain nongroup-based issues, differences in the numbers of relevant proposals between specific pairs of deputy groups are largely consistent with the corresponding differences in citizen preferences. Additionally, shared experience, rather than top‑down directives from the Communist Party, social pressure, resource constraints facing part‑time deputies, leadership positions in women’s affairs, or mobilization in ethnic autonomous regions, is the mechanism most likely to explain the link between descriptive and substantive representation. These findings suggest that single‑party regimes can draw on this link to make legislatures more representative, thereby helping to gather public opinion information without introducing multiparty elections.</p>