People's Republic (sometimes Popular Republic) is a title that is often used by Marxist-Leninist governments to describe their state. Currently there are five states in world that call themselves People's Republics: Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and North Korea. These states are rarely true republics.
Examples include:
Other Communist Party-led states are/were sometimes referred to as democratic republics (e.g. the German Democratic Republic), or democratic people's republics (e.g. the Democratic People's Republic of Korea).
There is also a usage of the term "People's Republic" in United States political conservative sarcasm: it is used to refer to any predominantly left-wing or liberal area, especially those cities with a large, liberal, university population - for example the "People's Republic of Berkeley" or "People's Republic of Austin". It has typically been used by political members of the political right wing to castigate towns for policies they deem beyond the pale or "un-American", by casting their ideological opponents as communists.
It may have been first used this way in the late 1960s, when The People's Republic of Berkeley (California) was used to describe the site of the Free Speech Movement.
Other sighted instances of this usage include:
It is possible that this usage is particularly prevalent in cases where a municipality represents an island of liberal politics within a conservative area.