Second, the new regulations highlight the critical importance of party rules and regulations for understanding institutional order and power. They often have higher status vis-a-vis laws of the PRC. We often overlook party rules and regulation, perhaps partly because how they are formulated and work is often opaque. In any case, Xi has prioritised party regulations as a mean of governing the Party and reshaping the way it rules.

Third, the process by which this new regulation has come about highlight the changes to the process of rule-making itself in recent years under Xi. In short, party regulations no longer needs to be passed by the National Party Congress, but rather can be passed by the Politburo. This centralisation of power at the top of the Party is noteworthy.

We are by no means experts on this stuff, so we’re pleased to bring you someone who is. Holly Snape’s article below helps us contextualise the new regulations, and illustrate the importance of party rules and regulation, and the process of party rule-making itself.

Have a good day.

- Yun and Adam

The New Central Committee Regulations in Context: Changing the Rules to Make the Rules?

Holly Snape, British Academy Fellow, University of Glasgow

“At all levels…government…the democratic parties and people without party affiliation, people’s organisations, enterprises and public institutions, primary-level mass self-governing organisations, and social organisations must all self-consciously accept Party Centre leadership.”

[Article 7, CCP Central Committee Work Regulations]    

On 12 October Xinhua released the full version of a set of regulations on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee, one of its two highest-ranking bodies. Though given the modest moniker of the ‘Central Committee Work Regulations’ (CCWR), they don’t stop at setting out the powers and responsibilities of the Committee itself or at codifying powers of its General Secretary (Xi Jinping). They also articulate sweeping obligations of state and society to the Committee. The Regulations were passed not by a National Party Congress (the other highest-ranking body, which at its last meeting had 2,280 delegates) but by a meeting of the Central Committee’s own inner Politburo (made up of one woman and 24 men).   

Inside the Party and state, the drafting processes behind regulations and quasi-regulations are key fields of political manoeuvring. Participation in the process is the means by which a leader post-Mao can have their personal preferences consecrated by the Party. Though these processes are opaque, examining Party planning and strategising and tracing institutional adjustments can illuminate an important murky corner. Here, I attempt to do this with the CCWR, a document that brings the CCP a step closer to the aim of entrenching “a fairly perfected regime of Party regulations by the centenary of the CCP’s founding.” 

Not a Law but Just as Important: Party ‘Legislating’

Under CCP rule, the task of formal legislating is delegated to the state — the National People’s Congress acts as the state legislature — though the legislation process (and the People’s Congress system itself) is heavily influenced by the CCP. 

Less researched but just as important, Party regulation-making is in some ways analogous to legislating. The power to make Party regulations is concentrated among a few organisations, and the process is governed by codified procedures. The Party regulations are ranked in a hierarchy of regulatory efficacy (meaning they carry different levels of authority, the power to formulate differently-ranked regulations is crucial, and the relationship between them has to be somehow upheld), its rules are binding for Party members (and sometimes beyond), and there is a system of penalties for failure to comply. While officially the process is called ‘formulating,’ some scholars refer to the regulations that govern it as “the Party’s ‘legislation law’” (“党内‘立法法’”) — a notion appropriated by the Party for inclusion in the official booklet form of an earlier version of this “Party legislation law.” 

Though they are officially called ‘intra-Party’ regulations, they are as important outside of the Party as they are in it. 

In 2019 the Politburo altered part of the definition of Party regulations, from ‘the internal Party rules system (党内规章制度) that regulates Party organisations’ work and activities and Party members’ behaviour...’ to a ‘designed-for-purpose rules system (专门章制度) that manifests the unified will of the Party, regulates Party leadership and Party building activities, and relies on the Party’s discipline to guarantee implementation.’ This better reflects their expansive (and expanding) reach.

Systematic Overhaul: Using Regulations to Remould the Party

As General Secretary, from the beginning of his first term, Xi has been orchestrating a complete overhaul of the Party regulations system. This has changed the way they are defined, formulated, passed, filed, vetted, studied, implemented, and integrated with state legislation. The overhaul has been paired with a rewriting (or writing anew) of their content. The CCWR should be understood in this context. 

Xi has now overseen the best part of two Five-Year Programmes for formulating Party legislation — the 2013–2017 Programme was the first of its kind. The second (2018–2022), listed the CCWR as a priority. 

By 2020 the Party — or a small part thereof — had written or amended over 180 central Party regulations (in 2018 this was reportedly 80—forty percent of the then total). Among those changed are formative documents of the ‘reform and opening’ era, like the 1980 Some Codes for Conduct in Political Life in the Party which was essentially re-written and passed at a 2016 Central Committee plenum. 

Around the country ‘Party regulation research institutes’ have mushroomed in the form of provincial level organisations (like those in Jilin and Shandong in 2017 and Beijing in 2018), within provincial Party schools (like that in Anhui in 2018), and in universities (sometimes in ‘collaboration’ with the provincial-level Party committee) such as at Wuhan University in 2016, and the China University of Political Science and Law, Xinjiang University, and Fujian Normal University in 2017.

Xi’s overhaul strategy, far from being an ‘internal’ Party matter, reaches deep to the roots of the way the CCP rules. 

Remoulding the Party and its Relationship to the State

Take for example the relationship between the state legal system and the Party regulatory system. The overhaul is part of the Four Comprehensives Strategic Plan. The jargon may be abstruse, but it sets out the elements of the strategy succinctly: 

1. the ‘moderately prosperous society’ (which the CCP has been promising, in various iterations, for decades); 

2. deepening reform (which cognitively suggests continuing along the same trajectory but clearly that’s not the case); 

3. ruling the country by law; and 

4. ruling the Party strictly. 

Given that the first is meant to be finished this year and the official line is that it’s basically complete, we can put it to one side. The second (deepening reform) officially aims at ‘modernizing the national governance system.’ This requires the marriage of numbers 3 and 4 (‘ruling the country by law’ and ‘ruling the Party strictly’). 

The CCWR is just one — admittedly crucial — building block of this masterplan. In 2014, the 18th Central Committee Fourth Plenum Resolution, stated that a “perfected Party regulation system” was a necessary component of “socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics rule of law.” This was a first. In 2019, a line from the 2014 Resolution was codified word for word in the heavily amended principles on how Party regulations are formulated: “focus on linking and harmonising Party regulations with state laws.” Drab this may seem, but it is an important, substantive, steppingstone to changing the relationship between Party regulations and law, between Party and state. 

Changing the Rules to Make the Rules?

Fast forward to the CCWR. How could such a critical piece of Party legislation be passed by a meeting of the 25–person Politburo (a meeting which Xi, as General Secretary, is responsible for calling)? 

In 2019, a Politburo meeting passed amendments to the ‘Party legislation law,’ changing the way central Party regulations are ‘reviewed and approved.’ This was no tweak: the two key documents, compared to their previous versions, according to a PKULaw-generated comparison, retained only 0.6 and 0.2 similarity. My own manual comparison showed up even more changes. 

Prior to these changes, the 2012 CCP Regulations on Party Regulation Formulation (RPRF)stipulated that Party regulations of this magnitude should have been vetted by a National Party Congress. 

The 2012 RPRF stipulated:

Article 22, The review and approval of Party regulations shall be carried out according to the following powers:

1. Intra-Party regulations that deal with the formation, make up, and powers of central organisations…shall be reviewed and approved by a National Party Congress

In 2019, this line was erased and replaced with: 

Article 28, The review and approval of central Party regulation drafts shall be carried out in the following way:

1. …

2. Regulation (条例) drafts shall ordinarily be reviewed and approved by a Central Committee Politburo meeting

The important thing here is not that ‘review and approval’ by 2,000+ people rather than 25 or less would have made the process substantively more democratic; it is that giving the Politburo meeting the power of approval likely gave the General Secretary greater influence over the timing and formulation process. While the common consensus in anglophone studies of Chinese politics is that the National Party Congress itself is toothless, the runup to a Congress is a crucial field of manoeuvring. The difference between approval by a Politburo meeting and that by a Congress meant that the CCWR could be passed outside of the runup to a Congress (and while Xi has strong support on the Politburo). 

The alteration of the ‘Party legislation law’ changed the rules for manoeuvring and placed the power of approval square in the Politburo meeting (and its convenor — the General Secretary). The CCWR further entrenches this, altering the relationship within the Party as well as that between Party and state. For example, Article 25 stipulates that: “on meeting with important situations [Politburo meetings] can be held whenever necessary” and “meeting agendas are decided by the General Secretary.” Meetings can be held as long as half of the Politburo’s members are present, and other people can observe “if necessary.” In other words, the General Secretary (Xi) can call a meeting, decide what to discuss, have just over half the Politburo present, invite others, and pass a document like the CCWR that codifies basic Party rules (with which state laws are then to be merged and aligned). This potentially streamlines, or sidesteps part of, the manoeuvring that could have gone on under the old rules.   

Beyond the Central Committee?

Though the CCWR is meant to regulate the Central Committee, a government website report already indicates it will be used much more broadly: “all regions and departments and the vast swathes of Party members and cadres must boost their political consciousness of [the need to] implement the spirit of the Regulations” applying this spirit to “all work of Party and state.”  

The CCWR itself reaches far beyond the powers and obligations of the Central Committee — a striking move for a legislative-like document. It defines the Committee’s “leadership status” partly in terms of the obligations of others to it. The state and societal organisations listed “must all self-consciously accept Party Centre leadership.”

Looking ahead, as analysts parse the documents from the Central Committee Plenum at the end of this month — including the Party’s “recommendations” for the state’s 14th Five-year Plan (FYP) and the “15-year long-term goal” — we should probably be watching for a CCWR Study-the-Spirit Campaign coursing through the Party and state (the ‘Two Studies, One Be’ campaign followed soon after the 13th FYP recommendations in 2016). Those documents need to be read in this context to understand the demands weighing on ministry, bureau and department heads as they gear policy and implementation toward the 14th FYP goals.

First, the last issue of Neican’s (March 22) Chinoiserie section has sources for researching Chinese party and government documents. I thought I’ll send you Holly Snape’s guide, Resources for Researching with Party and Government Documents, in full, because how useful it is. Thanks to Holly for letting us republish her excellent guide here. The original version was published as a Wechat post.

Second, we are letting you decide what topics Yun and I write this week. So comment on Twitter, Substack or email us with your suggestions.

Resources for Researching with Party and Government Documents

Holly Snape, British Academy Fellow, University of Glasgow

1. Government Policies

http://www.gov.cn/

Note:

This is the main national government website. There are different options for searching here, depending on what you’re looking for. I’ll go through some of the most useful below.

1)  For general policy searches, go to 政策 here: 

Then use the simple search function or select “Advanced Search” (高级搜索)

If you opt for “Advanced Search” you can choose to search for key words in:

Fulltext (全文)or just the Title (标题)

In Central (Party) related documents (中央有关文件) or deselect this to see only State Council (i.e. government) documents

[Note:中央有关文件isa good way to see what the Party policies are on or related to specific policy fields as well as government policies]

It splits the results into 中央有关文件 and 国务院文件 so you can easily tell which are Party and which are government (some will be both, but they will come under 中央有关文件)

2)  For general policy searches, go to 政策 here:

Then scroll down until you see the blue box (bottom right) that reads 信息公开目录

From inside 信息公开目录 you can search in different ways, e.g.

Select from the dropdown box whether to search in all; full text; title; document serial number; issuing body  

Where you see 全部you can search by the year.

There’s also a 高级搜索 (Advanced search)

3)  For recent cross-sectoral policies, go to 政策 here:

Then scroll down until you see the big blue bar across the screen that reads 国务院政策文件库

From inside 国务院政策文件库(State Council Document Database) you’ll see recent major policy key-words for large fields or cross-sectoral initiatives (e.g. 互联网+ the InternetPlus initiative covers a wide range of policy sectors seeking to integrate the internet to them e.g. InternetPlusHealthcare)

You’ll also see beneath the search window three options: “All Documents”; “State Council Documents”; “Departmental Documents”

4)  For laws and regulations; white books; the annual Government Work Report:

Go to 政策 here:

Then scroll all the way down to these white boxes. You can choose from 

1.[Government Work Report]; 2. [laws and regulations]; 3. [laws and regulations soliciting opinions]; 4. [white books]

[laws and regulations soliciting opinions] (政策法规意见征集) are drafts of new policies or bills that are made public before passage to solicit opinions. These are a good way to see if there are new policies in the making in your policy field. Often, when such a policy or bill is issued in a specific field, scholars and experts will debate it through different forums or join with colleagues to develop partial or complete alternatives. This can be a good way of understanding the different views of leading experts in a policy field and the problems and contentious issues surrounding that policy.

Inside[laws and regulations] you can search, from left to right:

[wholedatabase全库];[laws法律];[regulations行政法规];

[StateCouncil departmental rules 国务院部门规章]; [local regulations地方性法规]; [judicial explanations司法解释]

Note you can select to search according to title or according to main body of text

Whitebooks can be useful to give you an overview of your policy field.

I’d search in here using the Control+F, or Command+F on a Mac, and search single characters in your policy area. E.g. if I’m looking for poverty alleviation related policy I’d search 贫 (because searching for 贫困 won’t find the results 扶贫 or 减贫; for gender/women related content I’d search女

5)  For specific ministries and lists of what policies and regulations they’ve issued in a certain time period: 

Go to 政策 here:

Then scroll all the way down to the picture of the document (公报). 

Click on the picture and from there scroll down until you see two blue boxes on the right

The lower one is will take you to a page where you can choose from a list of ministries. Select the ministry you want.

It takes you to a list of years and months. Choose a month (for example, if you want to know the main policies etc. of the Ministry of Education in 2018 this would be achievable by going through each report in roughly 12 reports). Click on the month and it takes you to a downloadable PDF. Inside the PDF I would first skim the contents目录and maybe also search key characters inside the document.

6)  For less recent/historical documents:

There’s a big set of policy data from 1999 going back to 1954. This can be incredibly valuable, but you either a) need a clear idea of what you’re looking for, e.g.you’ve searched a policy field elsewhere and found that in 1998 there was a Document No.6 on education that you want to look for; or b) you’re looking generally at what sorts of policies were being introduced in a specific year(e.g. you’re doing a study that needs historical context or traces the development of a policy field back a long way). 

To find this data,

First, go to 政策 here:

Then look for the 历史公报（1954-1999）under the green box:

7)  For the range of documents and other types of data, a different way to search is:

Scroll all the way to the bottom of the homepage, where you’ll find:

The content that can be found in the different searches above in simple lists here instead of getting lost in the site.

2. Laws and Policies in English and Chinese

https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/

ChinaLaw Translate is a crowdsourced policy/law translation platform.

It’s an excellent resource (that you can also contribute to through either a subscription or voluntary translation)…if you quote CLT’s translations, please cite them :)   

3. Ministry Specific

You can easily search for a ministry in Baidu. Look for the blue tab that says 官方  

Different ministries organize their content in different ways. You’ll likely be able to familiarize yourself relatively painlessly with the ministry(ies) important to your policy field.

As an example, with the Ministry of Civil Affairs you can find 政策法规及解读 by scrolling over the tabs on the homepage and looking through 信息公开

That takes you straight into a list of types (left-hand column) departments within the ministry (under the yellow 法律法规)

4. Party meeting documents(Ch)

http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168/64569/index.html

Note:

This is a great, basic resource if you want to see what the Party was doing (or saying) and when at some of the highest levels. It has comprehensive access to the documents from the most important Party meetings (National Party Congress approx. every 5 years; Central Committee plenary sessions, meant to be at least once a year).

The Plenary Session documents are organized according to the Central Committee number that was meeting; you’ll find them under the National Party Congress number that marked the beginning of that Central Committee. e.g. by clicking on the 15th National Party Congress (中国共产党第十五次全国代表大会) in the left-hand column) you can scroll down and find the Plenary Session documents (sometimes only the shortened versions) for each Plenary Session of the 15th Central Committee(e.g. 一中全会、二中全会、三中全会)

What you can find here:

-  National Party Congress reports/resolutions (from 1st in 1921 to 19th in 2017)

-  Central Committee Plenary Session documents

-  Party Charter (each amended version found under the relevant Congress)

-  Other selected content, e.g. interviews, editorials surrounding major meetings

5. Party, government, NPC, CPPCC etc. documents (multilingual)

http://www.theorychina.org

Note:

There’s a lot to this. It takes a little while to navigate it, but it can be worth it. It brings together Chinese, English and a number of other language versions of the documents from the annual sessions of the national government, legislature (NPC), Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), etc.

What you can find here:

-  Government meeting documents

-  NationalPeople’s Congress documents

-  CPPCC

-   (some)“works of leaders” (e.g. the Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung)

-   (some)National Party Congress docs. (including most recent in Eng) 

If you want the Ch docs: keep scrolling down the homepage; click 更多>>

6. Intraparty Documents (Ch)

http://www.12371.cn/special/dnfg/ 

Note:

This is great if you want to see how the Party manages itself. It’s mostly designed for use for study etc. by Party members themselves, so it’s an authoritative and easy-to-use resource to facilitate study.

What you can find here:

-  Party Charter (each amended version)

-  Party regulations

-  Party measures

-  Party codes, etc.

7. Party Congress Reports (Eng) plus media/discourse analysis

http://chinamediaproject.org/2017/10/05/six-decades-of-ccp-congress-reports/?fbclid=IwAR2kabFbfOfIbmksB-1jvtPdEFPep5fBBRvOs5bSIGPJFV6otlMLxjVRrrc 

What you can find here:

- Directly downloadable Word versions of English National Party Congress reports (from 8th in 1956 to 18th in 2012) (i.e. all since the PRC’s founding)

- In China Media Report website, generally, there’s excellent analysis of political discourse

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